Betraying the children who struck a blow for liberation in ’76

POLITICIANS will be fanning out across the country on Friday, Youth Day, bragging about the wonderful things they have done to advance the interests of young South Africans. They have done nothing of the sort. In fact, they have put the future of the country and its youth in peril.

Youth Day was inspired by the Soweto uprisings of four decades ago when school children, tired of what they saw as the timidity and plain cowardice of their parents and the black political class, took matters into their own hands on an issue that concerned them — the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools.

The country has not given the youth of 1976 the credit they deserve. The Soweto uprising was a gamechanger in South African politics. School children, some still in short pants, shook the might of the apartheid state.

It can be argued that their courage and achievements exceeded those of the ANC Youth League.

The formation of the ANCYL by Nelson Mandela, Anton Lembede and Walter Sisulu had changed and invigorated a staid mother body from within. The ANC became a different, more vigorous and more militant beast with the introduction of the Programme of Action in 1949, which was championed by the youth league.

But the Soweto school children were just that — children, with no political infrastructure or agreed or uniform ideological direction.

Schools became sites of struggle. Unlike their predecessors, the pupils had no adults or political elders to call them to order. They probably wouldn’t have listened anyway. They defied not only their parents and teachers, but the prevailing political orthodoxy. They jolted the system.

Leaders such as Tsietsi Mashinini, Khotso Seatlholo, Murphy Morobe and Seth Mazibuko became household names.

But they were only youngsters, fuelled by the exuberance of youth, determined to change the world, their world.

And such political daring often exacts a heavy price. Mashinini died in exile under mysterious circumstances. Seatlholo died at home, a pauper, forgotten and unappreciated.

For Morobe, however, life seems to have come full circle. After a detour to Robben Island, mainstream politics and business, he’s now agitating, not against apartheid, but for changes within the ANC.

The Soweto uprising was the first such confrontation to be met with the violent wrath of the state since the Sharpeville shootings 16 years earlier. One would perhaps argue that, in the case of Sharpeville, the police, in unleashing such deadly gunfire, were dealing with adults.

But in Soweto police were confronted by children carrying stones. It made no difference. They mowed them down regardless. Many were killed, not only in Soweto but in other parts of the country as well as the unrest spread like wildfire.

Thousands of children throughout the country were thrown into jail. Schooling on the whole was suspended. Many pupils — with the dreaded police special branch in hot pursuit — fled into exile, where they swelled the ranks of liberation movements.

But joining the exile movements did not turn out to be the nirvana that they had hoped for. And they in turn became a headache for those organisations. They were young, impatient, even naive. Some thought that by joining organisations such as the ANC and PAC they would get arms and soon be back home to liberate their country. Instead, they found themselves kicking their heels at desolate training camps in faraway lands.

Some rebelled against their commanders and were butchered, as happened in ANC camps in Angola.

Given the centrality of education and youth in the liberation struggle, one would have thought a new government would have made them a priority. Inferior education for black people was one of apartheid’s cornerstones.

With no shortage of resources, fixing the education system could have been low-hanging fruit for a new government. But the ANC has made an absolute shambles of our education system. Education under an ANC government is producing students of a far poorer quality than education under apartheid.

Bantu education had an evil purpose; the current system, on the whole, is scandalous and frankly poisonous. Hendrik Verwoerd is laughing heartily in his grave.

Many parents are spending money they don’t have to send their children to private schools. Government schools — racked by indiscipline among teachers and pupils, poor results and teenage pregnancy — have become disaster areas.

Nor does the government seem to have an overall youth strategy. The National Youth Development Agency is just another employment opportunity for ANC types. A poor kid from a poorly resourced school in some far-flung village has no chance — and no future. That, unfortunately, is the fate of the majority of the children in this country.

Worse still, they’ll inherit a country destroyed and devastated by its current rulers.