‘I could never go home again’
ON the eve of June 16 there was some tension that I took to bed with me. We were about to embark on a quest that had not been attempted before as students.
We approached students on Monday and Tuesday before the march to plead for discipline and not do anything to cause the authorities to approximate what happened in Sharpeville.
What was a heavy burden on our shoulders was keeping that quiet and out of earshot of our parents. I was having dinner with the family while constantly sneaking out into the quiet night to prepare my banner and poster for the following day . . .
That was the last time I was home as I could never go home again.
On the morning of June 16 I did not even need an alarm clock to wake up.
My school was some distance from Orlando East, so I had to take two sets of transport to get there. On the bus we normally travelled on there was a palpable silence among students, only betrayed by conspiratorial glances at each other as they got off at different points knowing that we all had one thing in common that day.
By the time I got to Morris Isaacson High School — the morning sessions usually started at 7am before assembly — there was excitement in the air and animated conversations. As we finished the morning period, the bell for assembly rang and we were all just waiting for Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika to take over the morning’s prayer, which would give us our clarion call to head off into the streets.
Having been an activist for a couple years, I was quite surprised at the take-up among the students when we organised the rally, the speed and ease and support for the idea that we had to leave class that day and ASSAULT ON THE INNOCENT: Pupils march amid teargas during the 1976 uprising in Soweto pledge solidarity with the other students who had been boycotting classes against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.
My school being Standards 9 and 10, we were not affected by Afrikaans, but the students saw the state initiative for what it was: to impose the oppressors’ language on us, which was another tool for our subjugation.
After singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, we started singing other political songs of the time, such as Senzenina.
I do not remember the looks on our teachers’ faces, but they must have been that of total surprise.
When we went out into the streets it was a beautiful day. With the mist and smoke rising as the morning sun got warmer and warmer, we snaked our way through central Jabavu, White City, Rockville, Dube and all the way until we got to Orlando West, with the column just getting bigger and bigger.
We had been very clear that the primary school kids were not to be in the march, but as the commotion and the din of protest and struggle songs increased, even they were swept into the marchers’ slipstream.
By then there were thousands of students marching in from all the cardinal points of Soweto and they took the police completely by surprise.
What came out in our trial a couple of years later was that the police did not have the resources to act against a crowd. One of the majors said he had to send his men to police stations to collect spare teargas canisters. The police at Orlando West had only guns and batons.
From the initial shooting of Hector Pieterson and Hastings Ndlovu and the killing of a police dog, things changed dramatically and the worst feeling for anyone leading a march or group of people is the feeling of helplessness and inability to control it. We did not even have loudhailers to broadcast to the crowd to disperse.
We had to find somebody with a car to drive around to try to get the students to disperse — by then we had seen the columns of SADF troops marching into the township and driving in to set up camp at the sports field opposite the police station, with helicopters hovering around and throwing teargas in all directions.
The first government structure was going up in flames as the students were retreating back into the hinterland of Soweto and so it was that the day ended with smoke, fire and death.
After his release from Robben Island, Morobe became a prominent leader in the United Democratic Front and democratic government