There are some people whose lives become a bridge between history and conscience. Seth Mazibuko is one of them. He was the youngest member of the students’ committee that led the peaceful protest in Soweto.
I met Mazibuko during a recent visit to the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum in Soweto. To speak to him is to encounter not only a survivor of one of South Africa’s defining moments but a man who has spent decades insisting that memory must do more than lament. It must provide a foundation on which to build and move us to act.
This year marks 50 years since the June 16 Soweto Uprising. On this day, hundreds of schoolchildren rose in protest against an unjust and dehumanising apartheid system in South Africa. They marched peacefully against the compulsory use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction that the Bantu Education system imposed on black learners.
However, police responded with tear gas and live ammunition. Many paid with their lives.
This year also commemorates 30 years since the adoption of the Constitution, a document born from sacrifice, struggle and a belief in human dignity.
Few people embody the connection between those two moments more clearly than Mazibuko. He tells his story with unforgettable symbolism. His memories are vivid and poignant and listening to him humbles one in ways words can hardly express.
It is clear that, for him, June 16 is not an anniversary that comes and goes. It is an experience that has never left him. He speaks of the evening of that day, when he went to what is now Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital expecting to find his injured comrades — fellow schoolchildren who were protesting — in wards, only to find them in the mortuary. Their black and white school uniforms were stained with blood.
They were no longer being called by their names but by numbers.
June 16 was a tragedy and a turning point in the making of democratic South Africa. “June 16,” he says, was “a book versus a bullet” — a stark reminder that the blood shed by the children helped secure the right to vote. It is a freedom that came at an unbearable cost.
When I remember June 16, I often wonder how many seeds of youth activism it planted across the world. The image of a teenager carrying a critically wounded child struck a chord far beyond the country’s borders. It stirred global conscience, intensified anti-apartheid sentiment and helped galvanise international action, including the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 392 on 19 June 1976 and later the establishment of the Day of the African Child by the African Union in 1991.
Youth have played a defining role in shaping South Africa’s constitutional democracy. Today, young human rights defenders continue to demand accountability and a more just future — not only in South Africa but across the globe. They are at the forefront of social change and activism, demanding a cleaner environment, better education and access to basic services. June 16 reminds us that youth rights are human rights and that struggles for justice can ripple far beyond their place of origin.
As South Africa marks this important anniversary, Mazibuko’s life evokes both pride and discomfort. Pride, because the Constitution stands as one of the most visionary human rights documents in the world. Discomfort because the daily realities of many young South Africans echo the inequalities that June 16 rose against. Poverty, exclusion, unemployment, educational disparity, gender-based violence and the fraying of social trust continue to threaten the promise of freedom and social justice.
Yet this is not a fixed reality. It is one that can change and must change. That change begins by placing human rights and history at the centre of how we understand the present and shape the future.
Mazibuko speaks of his life through the powerful metaphor of stones. He describes himself as a man who has lived through “three stone ages”. He threw stones in resistance as a young activist. He broke stones while imprisoned under apartheid. And today, he speaks of gathering stones to build a better South Africa.
The task before us is no longer to dismantle apartheid but to construct the society envisioned in the Constitution. It is to gather the stones of memory, justice, equality, education, accountability and solidarity and to build a society that prospers.
My encounter with Mazibuko stopped me in my tracks. It was deeply moving but more than that, it revealed something profound about his contribution to democracy. He did not stop at resistance; he embraced responsibility, lived for humanity and embodies wisdom shaped by struggle.
He belongs to a generation that not only fought an unjust system but made a commitment to build a just one.
Fifty years on, his voice still carries the authority of lived experience. It is the voice of someone who has seen what happens when a society denies its children their humanity.
His message is simple: Together, we must gather stones to build the world we want.
Abigail Noko is the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights regional representative for Southern Africa