No more Sharpevilles, no more Sowetos, no more Bhishos. And no more Marikanas

We owe it to the Soweto generation to ensure the right to peaceful protest is guaranteed, writes Albie Sachs

News came through that police in Soweto had opened fire on protesting schoolchildren. The campus at Dar es Salaam was outraged Many of the Soweto generation trained as MK combatants and joined the elite special operations unit headed by Slovo

IN 1976, if you were an engaged and progressive-minded scholar eager to support liberation throughout the world, the University of Dar es Salaam was the place to be.

After 10 years as an exile in London, studying and lecturing and doing antiapartheid work, it was great to be back on African soil. Tanzania, the poorest country of East Africa, had given the liberation movements the greatest support.

Julius Nyerere was the model president, modest in lifestyle, open in thought and welcoming of political debate and contestation. Above all, at considerable direct and indirect cost to his country, he had allowed our soldiers to set up camps in Tanzania and intellectuals to study and teach at the university. A key meeting of the ANC had taken place at Morogoro. That is where the ANC School was established. (It was later to be called the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College.) This was where my son Michael was to complete his studies.

Each morning I would be driven over the most potholed roads in the world to the Law School. There were no textbooks. We had to write out our lectures to be typed onto wax sheets which were then roneoed off for the students. But the intellectual excitement was intense. Ideas mattered. The students were on fire. After the fall of the dictatorship in Portugal, Mozambique and Angola had gained their independence. We argued and debated about which countries in southern Africa would be next. South Africa, the bastion of apartheid, with our leaders in prison or in exile and the liberation movements banned, seemed to be firmly under white control.

Then the news came through that police in Soweto, near Johannesburg, had opened fire on protesting schoolchildren, leaving many dead and wounded on the ground. The campus at Dar was outraged. The next day, and the next week, and the next few months, more news about more schoolchildren shot down came through from more and more parts of the country. The news reports spoke about riots. We called it the children’s uprising. South Africa was being transformed.

I spent hours and hours explaining to Tanzanians about the Afrikaans language, the simplified form of Dutch, with an admixture of Khoisan and Malay words. It had been created by slaves from the East Indies in the kitchens of their masters’ homes at the Cape, then adopted by their masters and made into an official language in South Africa. Now it was being enforced as a medium of instruction on black kids in faraway Soweto. I told them about the Black Consciousness Movement emerging in South Africa and we debated its possible influence on our liberation struggle.

In September that year I visited Mozambique and felt at first hand the inspiring energy of the Mozambican revolution. The victory of Frelimo had in fact contributed directly to the rebelliousness of the youth in South Africa. Now thousands of young black South Africans were streaming across the border from South Africa into Mozambique. Some joined the ANC, others the PAC. Some became soldiers, others volunteered for study. A third group identified themselves as followers of the Black Consciousness Movement.

The debates in the ranks of the ANC were intense. All of us were shocked by the brutality of the repression. All were inspired by the courage of the schoolchildren. But where did we stand on the question of Black Consciousness?

Mark Shope, a highly respected trade union leader, was troubled by the concept. He said it was moving people back from revolutionary consciousness. But Joe Slovo welcomed the idea enthusiastically. The young people were showing fighting spirit, he said. They would strengthen the ranks of MK enormously; the struggle itself would show them what the positives and what the limitations of the concept were.

I have no doubt that Slovo’s prediction was correct. In fact, many of the Soweto generation trained as MK combatants and joined the elite special operations unit headed by Slovo. They didn’t abandon Black Consciousness, but brought it with them into the broader liberation struggle. Their passion, thoughtfulness and determination reinvigorated the fight for freedom.

Today our constitution guarantees that everyone has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions. We owe it to the brave generation of Soweto to defend the constitution and to ensure that the rights for which they gave their lives are protected in every way.

This means no more Sharpevilles, no more Sowetos, no more Bhishos. And it also means no more Marikanas. The South African people have won their rights with intelligence, courage and sacrifice. By using these rights with intelligence, idealism and courage, we give due honour to those who fell on June 16 1976.