How should a country commemorate the anniversary of a national tragedy or mark a day of national importance — especially one that changed the course of history?
Just last month, we observed European nations celebrate Victory in Europe (VE) Day, to mark the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender to the Allies, which formally ended World War 2 in Europe. In Russia, a huge military parade was attended by dignitaries from the rest of the former Soviet Union, barring Ukraine and its sympathisers.
In the UK, business came to a standstill in government buildings as everyone observed two minutes’ silence in honour of those who fell in the war. Later that day, an event was held to pay the nation’s respects to the 46 surviving British veterans of the conflict.
A month earlier, in Israel, sirens wailed and traffic came to a complete standstill for two minutes as the country observed Holocaust Remembrance Day — to commemorate the 6-million Jewish people who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
It was at the tail end of a visit to the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto the other day that the commemoration question struck me. I was in the part of the museum dedicated to the memory of the probably thousands of schoolchildren who died between June 16 1976 and October 1977. I say “probably thousands” because there are no official figures and, 49 years later, there are still families whose loved ones remain unaccounted for.
This section of the museum features hundreds of red bricks strewn across a yard. Each of them is inscribed with the name of a pupil, or any other victim, and the date that person was killed.
“Hastings Ndlovu — 76.06.16” is the first name one notices. It is believed the 17-year-old was the first pupil to be struck by a police bullet. Next to his name is that of Pieterson — after whom the museum is named — and who, at 13, was among the youngest victims. Towards the back of the yard, you find Jackson Gishi, killed a day after Christmas in 1976.
There is a total of 577 bricks, each one representing a life lost in the first five months of the carnage. But as one of the former pupils of the time later told me, even the figure for those five months is “on the south side”.
Though far from being a complete and accurate representation of all those who died, the yard gives us a glimpse into the scale of the tragedy that befell Soweto and South Africa soon after the pupils rose up against the apartheid government’s plans to impose Afrikaans as the language of instruction in black schools.
The events of the day had far-reaching consequences — not just for Soweto and its pupils, but also for South Africa as a whole. It set in motion a series of political developments that eventually led to the 1994 transition to democracy.
June 16, it could be argued, is the most consequential day in the history of apartheid South Africa — not only because of the staggering numbers who died in the subsequent days and months, but also because it marked the beginning of sustained mass resistance to state repression that lasted for more than a year.
But how do we commemorate the day? Yes, it is a public holiday, but is it accorded the solemnity one might expect? There are adults who mark the day by donning the school uniforms they wore when they were at school, if they still fit, as a show of respect to the class of ’76. Some then go on to spoil it all by spending the holiday at drinking holes in full school uniform, thereby soiling the memory of the brave protesters.
What concerns surviving members and leaders of the class of ’76, however, is the inclination of the government, the private sector and even civil society organisations to water down the significance of the day by crowding it out with activities that have nothing whatsoever to do with what happened all those years ago.
That the commemoration can be linked to a music festival afterwards — because, they say, the youth like music, when they have 364 other days to do that — reduces the significance of June 16
— Thabo Ndabeni, June 16 Youth Development Foundation
For example, the June 16 Youth Development Foundation’s Thabo Ndabeni says that every year his organisation finds itself fighting with organisers who want to stage fashion shows in Soweto on the day.
“This year, we had to stop a music festival that was supposed to happen on June 16,” says Ndabeni. “We pressured the organisers to have it on June 15. It is a festival that has its own significance, but we wanted to know why they were adamant about holding it on June 16. Last year, we stopped a fashion show billed for June 16 — again in Soweto.
“That the commemoration can be linked to a music festival afterwards — because, they say, the youth like music, when they have 364 other days to do that — reduces the significance of June 16.”
The problem starts with calling the holiday “Youth Day”, says Sibongile Mkhabela, one of the surviving leaders of the student uprising, who served time in Kroonstad prison for her role in the protests. The ANC government, she contends, was quick to agree with the “compromise” of renaming “Sharpeville Day” and “June 16" as “Human Rights Day” and “Youth Day” respectively, because most of its leaders — who spent many years in exile — did not appreciate what those events mean to the majority.
“When we say ‘June 16’, they don’t understand the emotional attachment to articulating it in that way. Nor do they understand the significance of saying ‘Sharpeville Massacre’, as opposed to ‘Human Rights Day’. It is not the same thing. But if you were not here to understand, it is easy for you to say, ‘Well, let’s rename it. And this Azania thing you guys keep talking about is not practical, so let’s just continue being South Africa, because we’ve got big work to do.’ You are dismissing everything of importance to those people who brought you to this point,” she says.
Both Mkhabela and Ndabeni are critical of how politicians, especially those from the ANC, often distort the history of the day at rallies to put themselves or their organisation at the centre of the story when, in reality, they had little to do with the uprising.
Ndabeni was in form 5 at Musi High School in 1976 when Soweto erupted. At the school, he had been one of the founding branch members of the South African Students' Movement (SASM), a high school students’ organisation. This grouping was to play a leading role in organising the first protest march against Afrikaans.
While many trace the uprising to a meeting of Soweto school representatives on June 13 at Donaldson Orlando Community Centre, where a decision to march to Orlando Stadium on June 16 was taken, Ndabeni says this approach misses the real story about the genesis of the 1976 protests.
To understand how and why the students rose up in the way they did, one has to first understand the Soweto and black South Africa of the early 1970s.
This was a time of Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement, which had emerged in the late 1960s and quickly filled the political void left by the banning of the ANC and the PAC after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre.
The movement was strongest on black university campuses such as Turfloop and Fort Hare, where it organised under the banner of the South African Students' Organisation (Saso). In 1974, after Mozambique gained independence from Portugal, Saso organised pro-Frelimo rallies across the country, which led to some of its leaders being arrested and its members expelled from the universities they were attending.
Some of the expelled students ended up teaching in Soweto, becoming catalysts for student politicisation at high schools in the township. They found fertile ground there. Pupils such as Ndabeni had been raised within a strong culture of reading, so they had inquiring minds.
“Luckily, when I was in standard 3, my primary schoolteacher would release us at noon every day to go to the Dube library. We would sit in the library until she rode past it on the school bus and called out for us to go home,” remembers Ndabeni. “That experience helped me appreciate the library ... we were introduced early to reading because of our teacher and the librarian.”
The expelled Saso-members-turned-teachers — including future national police commissioner Jackie Selebi and legendary Turfloop student leader Onkgopotse Tiro — had a profound influence on the students.
“Those people moulded us with their approach to education,” says Ndabeni. “They would say, ‘Guys, Bantu education is designed for you to come out at the end as an inferior product, but what we are doing is preparing you for the world. Therefore, we will give you two syllabuses — one to pass your exams, and another to engage with the world.”
“Even those of us not doing history would attend Jackie’s sessions because he did the same thing. Jackie would say, ‘The history you find [in a textbook] is totally different from the history I am going to teach you.’”
Mkhabela had similar formative experiences. She had grown up under the guidance of famed social activist Ellen Kuzwayo, and was involved with the Young Women’s Christian Association from the tender age of 10.
“If you consider only what we did on that day [June 16], you truly don’t understand anything,” she says. “You just see the event. To really understand the people who took to the streets on that day, you need to understand the community that raised them and the people who motivated them — women such as Mama Kuzwayo, who made me feel I mattered.”
Without teachers, parents and other adults determined to undermine Bantu education by encouraging pupils to read beyond their prescribed textbooks, there would have been hardly any resistance to the system, the two argue.
“You have to appreciate the extent of the mobilisation of South Africans inside the country and put to one side thoughts of those in exile. I want you to understand how South Africans fought for their freedom. Politicians today say they freed us, but we wonder what they are talking about, because we thought we freed ourselves,” Mkhabela says.
In a politicised environment, students took an interest in the ongoing fight between school governing bodies and the department of education over the introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction.
Ndabeni had already been taught in Afrikaans because, when he was in form 2, the department made him and his peers take subjects such as geography and maths in Afrikaans as part of a pilot project.
“That was in 1973,” he says. “At the end of the year, we passed. The department, we were told, was trying to see if we were competent in Afrikaans, so we were part of an experiment. So the issue of resistance to Afrikaans was not so much our saying Afrikaans was difficult. In fact, we were saying, ‘We don’t want Afrikaans because it is the language of the oppressor.'”
In telling the honest story, you unfortunately have to tell a story beyond the ANC. You have to tell a story beyond the leadership of today — one that shows the commitment of the African people. The idea of people coming from the outside and saying, ‘We are your liberators’ — that lie cannot continue to be told
— Sibongile Mkhabela, one of the surviving leaders of the 1976 student uprising
By March 1976, trouble had started. Pupils at Phuthi Primary School protested over the introduction of Afrikaans, and at its subsequent AGM SASM decided to back them.
Hence the June 13 decision to have a peaceful march.
Ndabeni and his schoolmates didn’t immediately join the protests when they began that morning. They did so only in the afternoon, after they had seen running battles in the streets between the police and pupils.
“We saw what was happening only after finishing writing our exams at midday,” Ndabeni says. “Musi High is on higher ground, so as we left the classrooms we could see smoke in the Orlando West direction. Parents around Pimville warned us to change out of our uniforms, as ‘the Boers were shooting children’. That is when we became part of it and joined the other pupils being chased by the police.”
For Ndabeni, the 1976 protests were a psychological boost for pupils and their struggle against oppression.
“The 1976 generation defied the system. We became victors in that the minority government came to realise that force could not make people compliant. The pupils challenged the police and the army with stones. A typical image of a pupil at that time was that of a young person with a dustbin lid in one hand and a rock in the other. For pupils who died in protests held around 1976, the bullet wounds were frontal, meaning they were facing whoever was shooting at them. This stands in stark contrast with the situation at Sharpeville. where the majority of the protesters were shot in the back.”
The intention behind the march, however, was for the pupils to protest peacefully and hand over a memorandum to the authorities. It was the actions of the police that caused the situation to escalate into a violent confrontation.
About a year after the uprising started, Mkhabela, Ndabeni, Seth Mazibuko, Murphy Morobe and seven others were arrested and charged with sedition and terrorism for being student leaders. Mkhabela, Morobe, Mazibuko and Dan Motsitsi were handed prison terms, while the other seven received five-year sentences, suspended for five years.
“I have said to other people that we woke up in the morning on June 16 as schoolkids, but by sunset we had become liberation fighters,” Ndabeni says.
He was to spend the next few of years of his life in and out of police cells because of his struggle activities.
His worry now is that the current generation of youth seems not to appreciate what those who came before them had to go through so they could live in a country where constitutional rights are guaranteed for every citizen, regardless of skin colour.
“When you talk to the youngsters of today, they tend to say, ‘Why are you telling us about history? We have our own problems today. We are unemployed — and, and, and. So let’s rather deal with the issues confronting us today.
“I’m not saying those issues are unimportant — they are very important. But June 16 and the sacrifices of the many pupils who were killed on that day are crucial too. The bodies of some of the protesters are lying in unmarked graves, and some young people had their lives destroyed as a result of their efforts to end apartheid. All of this is no longer of any significance to [the youth of today].”
If it was up to him, the June 16 commemorations would be stripped of all the frills that have come to be associated with them — such as mass rallies where government and political party leaders take the spotlight, while those who were involved and their families are barely heard.
“We would rather have an event where we remember the lives and the sacrifices of the many people who participated in the uprising,” he says. “That is very important in building and nurturing the next generation. Then people can go their separate ways and do what they like.”
For Mkhabela, as the country prepares for the 50th anniversary of the historic day, redemption is still possible. For her, it begins with telling the story in full, not just titbits carefully selected to make heroes of certain individuals and organisations, while the rest of the people who contributed are ignored.
“In telling the honest story, you unfortunately have to tell a story beyond the ANC. You have to tell a story beyond the leadership of today — one that shows the commitment of the African people. The idea of people coming from the outside and saying, ‘We are your liberators’ — that lie cannot continue to be told.”
The story that should be told instead is one that does not detract from the agency of ordinary people who either shaped the minds of the young activists or, as pupils, took on heavily armed police and soldiers, armed only with metal dustbin lids and stones.
“The teachers at our schools were determined. Naledi High was in a part of Soweto called the ‘Wild West’. The principal of the school, Mr Mthimkhulu, told us we should consider ourselves rather as the ‘Jewel of the West’. He told us every day at assembly that we mattered, changing the way we saw ourselves, and we became a school with one of the best debating teams. When you try to tell this story now, it is impossible, because it is too real and has too many people in it.”
As for the June 16 holiday, what would she prefer it to be called?
“It would be best for the question to be put to the people who revolted and their children,” she says. “In the meantime, ‘June 16 Uprising Day’ would suffice. It conveys a lot more significance than ‘Youth Day’.”
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