Historical footsteps to Soweto Uprisings

Title: Soweto Uprising: Counter Memories of June 1976 Author: Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu Publisher: Picador Africa Reviewer: Tumo Mokone

The story of June 16 1976 student protests holds firm 41 years later as an event widely credited with cracking apartheid’s armoury, leading to eventual democratic rule in South Africa.

Given this momentous reputation, the story of the Soweto Uprisings cannot be told enough. Ndlovu’s book, however, is an updated edition with new content. Apart from being a career historian, Ndlovu witnessed the story unfold as a 14-year-old student at Phefeni Junior Secondary School in Orlando West, Soweto.

The day’s most famous casualty Hector Pieterson was shot dead a stone’s throw from Ndlovu’s school. Ndlovu traces the history of the uprising to the language policy adopted at the birth of the Union of South Africa, the forerunner to the apartheid Republic of South Africa. He cites the 1909 South Africa Act, ahead of the formal declaration of the union in 1910, as the roots of the bloody events on June 16.

He quotes the act’s section 137: “... both the English and the Dutch languages shall be treated on a footing of equality, and posses and enjoy equal freedom, rights, and privileges; all records, journals ... shall be kept in both languages.”

This, therefore, clearly laid the foundation for the quest for the medium of instruction in schools to be in both languages.

This policy was further strengthened over the years, as Dutch would later be replaced with Afrikaans via the 1925 amendment of the 1909 South Africa Act. To up the ante, the Afrikaans nationalists who now dominated government, noted the minimal usage of Afrikaans in black schools and sought to vigorously change that. As a result, the Department of Bantu Education in 1973 issued a circular emphasising that English and Afrikaans will be accorded 50/50 status as schools’ languages of instruction.

The circular further said “it will be in the interest of pupils to use one medium only”.

That paved the way for the department to randomly choose schools in Soweto that were going to be taught in Afrikaans, setting the ball rolling with mathematics and social science.

Apart from further circulars and policies on the language issue, the author demonstrates how the hand of the Broederbond pressed hard the promotion of Afrikaans in the education of black children.

The secretive group driving Afrikaner nationalism and the propagation of Afrikaans claimed in a document that black people were more exposed to Afrikaans and that they learnt it quicker and easier than English. The book also exposes other accompanying circumstances.

These included government legislating that urban black people were citizens of Bantustans and that they lived as visitors in white areas.

The uprising’s contribution to mass exodus to exile is another topic of interest in this book.