South Africa this week marks the 30th anniversary of a watershed in its anti-apartheid struggle when hundreds of children in Soweto protesting the forced teaching of Afrikaans died in a brutal police crackdown.
The June 16 youth protest began in the black township of Soweto, spreading like wildfire across the country and marking a turning point in the liberation movement.
The world was horrified by the brutal face of apartheid when police fired teargas and bullets, killing about 23 people in Soweto alone on the first day, according to conservative police estimates of the time.
A total of 575 people had died across the country by February 1977 as per police records. But independent estimates are much higher.
The tragedy was captured in a photograph by Peter Magubane: 12-year-old school boy Hector Peterson dying in the arms of a friend after being struck down by a police bullet.
The brutal police response provided a jolt to foreign governments who tightened sanctions on the white regime in South Africa and radicalised a generation of anti-apartheid activists.
Thirty years on, many veterans of the so-called “Class of 76” say the significance of the Soweto uprisings does not fully resonate with today’s youth born in a free country.
“It was a world first — throughout history one has had noteworthy movements by university students and collegiates but this was a protest by primary, junior and high school children,” said Ali Hlongwane, curator of Soweto’s Hector Peterson Memorial Museum.
“But a section of the current generation sees it as just a mere public holiday: an excuse to go to [a] festival, to go drinking and to have braais,” said Hlongwane, who was 11 when he took part in the protest marches.
Hlongwane also lamented that the day was largely ignored. “It just shows that the so-called ‘Rainbow Nation’ hasn’t concretised,” he said.
Hector Peterson’s sister, who was at his side when he was shot, also said that many youths did not fully grasp the significance of the day.
“The children of today don’t understand the day fully. It was a turning point for all South Africans … it gave us a free country,” Antoinette Sithole said.
Sithole (69) said she had learnt to deal with her personal demons.
“I remember each and every thing that happened that day. I used to feel bitter but I now don’t … I have long forgiven although I have not forgotten.”
The uprising was also linked to the poor education system in Soweto and other black areas and schools — in 1975 the government was spending R644 on a white child’s education a year but a paltry R42 for a black child.
Somolzi Selane, another June 16 stalwart, said despite the poor level of education, students of that time were far more politically conscious.
“Now in schools there is the gun culture and unruliness,” said the 51-year-old. “The condition of Soweto schools today is not that happy.”
Many of the June 16 participants went into exile to join the then-banned African National Congress and helped rejuvenate the movement, which culminated in the demise of apartheid in 1994.
Although Soweto has come a long way from being an ordinary “dormitory” township housing essentially black miners separated from their families, many feel the changes are purely cosmetic.
A plush new shopping mall is being built, a luxury hotel is under construction and many have renovated their once-basic homes, but the sprawling township of at least 1,5-million does not have an auditorium.
Although there are plans to build one it comes way too late for some like Soweto actor and director David Phetoe.
“Soweto was built to be a labour camp and culturally we seem to be the same as a labour camp,” Phetoe (71) said in a recent newspaper interview.
President Thabo Mbeki will head the official 30th anniversary celebrations at a rally on Friday in Soweto following a march by school students. – AFP