Struggle stalwart remembers June 16, 1976
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the 16 June 1976 student uprisings., Insession writer Mava Lukani took the opportunity to talk to Mr Murphy Morobe, who was a student leader at Morris Isaacson High School on that fateful day.
in technical colleges to improve their standards and make them the institutions of choice for the youth. He added that the government should play a role in creating awareness of the relevance of technical colleges in our economy and in addressing skills shortages in the job market. “Government must promote technical colleges as an alternative sector for skills development, youth entrepreneurship, career paths and employment if we were to ensure that the youth play an active role in our mainstream economy, in their lifetime.”
Mava Lukani: Your demand of “Down with Afrikaans” in your memorandum of demands was a lobbying point and one of the students’ central demands.
Murphy Morobe: To us, “Down with Afrikaans!” was a rebellion, not against the language per se, but against its application by the apartheid regime as a tool for the deepening of oppression against Africans. We understood its imposition as having nothing to do with the educational advancement of the black child, but rather a wellestablished disposition of conquerors to diminish the conquered of their sense of self-esteem by denying them their inalienable right to their language in which their values and cultural norms are embedded.
ML: Was Morris Isaacson High School the springboard of the student uprising and its driving force?
MM: Morris Isaacson was one of a number of high schools in Soweto that took the struggle to the streets on the June 16. It was Orlando West Junior Secondary School, together with Belle Primary School, that had been boycotting classes in protest against Afrikaans long before June 16. It was through the mobilisation of all the high schools by the South African Student Movement (SASM) that a critical mass of student support was reached, leading up to the day of the march. So while Morris Isaacson played a pivotal role, it cannot be solely characterised as the “springboard” of the student uprising.
ML: You were in the same class with Tsietsi Mashinini. Can you briefly tell us about him and his vision for a nonracial and democratic future South Africa?
MM: Tsietsi Mashinini’s leadership qualities were not in doubt among those of us who were involved with him in the Morris Isaacson branch of the South African Student Movement. An articulate and extroverted individual, he was to be the natural choice for chairmanship of the Action Committee we established on 13 June 1976 with the primary responsibility of organising the entire high school student body of Soweto to take to the streets in protest on 16 June.
He, like most of us, embraced a vision of a South Africa in which education would be free and underpinned by values of democracy, itself predicated on the key principle of black liberation from the yoke of apartheid.
ML: June, 16 1976 will remain as a watershed day in the history of the South African struggle and this year marks the 45th anniversary of that fateful day. What is your comment on that?
MM: There can be no gainsaying the fact that the event of June 16th, 45 years ago, was pivotal in changing and expediting the course of liberation leading to victory over the apartheid government. From protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools, the protest rapidly progressed from being merely about the language issue to a full-blown struggle against apartheid rule. It marked the instant arousal of political consciousness among the oppressed and was given expression through the slogans which began to proliferate across the length and breadth of our country, calling not only for the reversal of the government’s language policy, but expressed brazen demands to end apartheid and grant political freedom and equality to all.
ML: We are told that the protest was inherently nonviolent. Some of today’s students have been known to torch and destroy their resources to put pressure on the authorities. What is your comment?
MM: Following on the deaths resulting from police brutality in trying to disperse the marchers on the day, the evening sky was lit by scores of government buildings that were set alight by township residents angered by the police use of live ammunition against unarmed student protesters. All government infrastructure was targeted, as it was seen as representing the apartheid system. It must be reiterated that it was never the intention of the organisers of the marchers to be violent. However, our alienation from these representations of apartheid rule over us was total. As they say, the genie was out of the bottle, and it was never going back.