ANDREW WORSDALE previews a moving new radio documentary commemorating Youth Day
A MASTERFUL radio documentary, The Story of June 16th , begins with a police loudhailer: “This gathering under section 48 of the Internal Security Act is defined as a riotous gathering and you are all ordered to disperse.”
With the sound of gunfire laid over the background, the then minister of justice Jimmy Kruger is asked to defend police actions on the fateful day to overseas critics. He says: “In all honesty, any objective observer will concede that the police haven’t exceeded, as far as we know, any of the powers they should have exercised. I think in all fairness to the South African Police one should rather feel thankful for the way they handled this and the way they have managed to calm the feelings of Soweto.”
What follows is a moving first-hand account of the shocking events of the day made up into an audio montage of onlookers and participants.
The programme, due to air nationwide on SAfm on June 16 is a co-production between the Ulwazi educational radio project and BBC’s Radio 4. Siven Maslamoney, director of Ulwazi, says the non-profit organisation was set up through the South African Institute for Distance Education and Britain’s Overseas Development Agency.
“Our aims are to train young black producers and use radio as a medium for mass education, but, saying that, our entire approach is non-didactic. We don’t `teach’ on the radio, rather we use real stories of real people to get something across,” says Maslamoney.
To date, the project has produced over 120 programmes, ranging from Stimela, a show about migrant labour, to this week’s upcoming June 16 21st anniversary programme.
The production is a flawless montage of interviews, with music and sound effects propping the background. It has no script and no presenter, instead it’s a documentary based on real-life experiences.
It is direct and is compulsive listening. One of the powers of radio is that it lets the imagination run, and through the personal accounts of people who lived through that day, the ears keep feeding the brain.
The collation of interviews begins with the background to the student demonstrations against Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools. Almost everyone relates that that Wednesday was an ordinary winter morning and that when the march began moving from school to school in Soweto the students were remarkably disciplined and peaceful. It was a leisurely and controlled march, but an overwhelming tension grew as the gathering police waited for the students to defy them.
There are moving accounts of the death of Hector Pieterson, the spark that ignited the chaos that would eventually lead to political uprisings on a nationwide scale. Journalist Sophie (Tema) Mosimane recalls the young boy dressed in a green jersey with yellow stripes and wearing only one shoe. It was her car that was used to transport Pieterson to the clinic, where he was found dead on arrival.
What emerges through various people’s testimonies is that, after one killing, everything degenerated into a state of anarchy, with government offices, bottle stores, beer halls, administration offices, houses and trucks being ransacked and burnt by a crowd of youths who became vengeful.
But probably the most moving parts of this radio programme are the insights into the day’s events from parents of the school children. Many mothers left their places of work early, after they heard reports of the riots, and they speak of their journeys home, witnessing the anger, chaos and bloodshed. One woman says: “After that day, you stopped being a child to your parents. You had to become a fugitive and leave your home and leave your school.”
What finally emerges is the need to commemorate the loss of loved ones as well as the need to celebrate the energy of those young people and the democratic victory that’s come out of the suffering of that catalytic day. The real virtue of the programme is that it refuses to be bitter or vitriolic. Rather, it is a sad and humanising account of real lives, parents and children who were forced to change their destinies.
— The Story of June 16th will be broadcast on SAfm at 1.10pm on Monday, June 16