1. Afrikaans was the trigger
In 1974, South Africa’s apartheid government—led at the time by
Prime Minister B.J. Vorster—passed the Afrikaans Medium Decree, which stated
that all black schools must use a 50-50 mixture of English and Afrikaans in
lessons. Afrikaans was designated as the sole language for certain subjects,
including mathematics and social studies.
The decree was decried by black
schools and teachers’ associations on the practical basis that many black
children did not speak the language, making pedagogy much more difficult. On a
more symbolic level, however, Afrikaans was seen as the “language of the
oppressor,” as described by Desmond Tutu—it was the language
of the apartheid government and was heavily associated with the system of
white-minority rule.
2. Tens of thousands of students
took to the streets
A series of smaller protests against the Afrikaans directive had
already taken place ahead of June 16, when black students gathered to march
from their schools in Soweto to the nearby Orlando Stadium. Estimates of the
number of students involved that day range between 10,000 and 20,000, and the
demonstrations were backed by anti-apartheid groups such as the grassroots
activist Black Consciousness Movement. The students were confronted by armed
police blocking their route and the protests soon descended into violence, with
police firing live rounds at the gathered children and teenagers leading to the death of hundreds of the protesting students.
3. The death toll is disputed
South African police gave the
official death toll from June 16, 1976 as 23, though this is widely disputed
and others have estimated hundreds of casualties—the government-appointed
Cillié Commission of Inquiry put the death toll at 575 in September 1976, blaming
police for the majority of casualties. The protests rolled into a second day as
students and police clashed again, with pupils stoning cars driving through
Soweto and police helicopters deployed to monitor the situation. The United
Nations Security Council was urgently convened and denounced theSouth
African government for “its resort to massive violence against and killings of
the African people including schoolchildren and students and others opposing
racial discrimination.”
4. One photo came to symbolize the
uprising
Though many children perished in the violence of the Soweto
uprising, the image of 18-year-old Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying the limp and blood-stained
body of Hector Pieterson, 12, served as the touchstone for
international outrage at the crackdown. Pieterson is believed to have been one
of the first children killed in the violence and a memorial and museum in his
name was established in the Orlando West suburb of Soweto in 2002. The memorial
commemorates the victims of the Soweto uprising and South African politicians laid wreaths there
on Thursday to mark the anniversary.
The image was taken by local
photographer Sam Nzima, who was punished with 19 months of house arrest
following the publication of the image. According to Nzima, U.S. presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton once tried to buy the camera he used to take the
photo, but the offer was rebuffed by the former wife of Nelson Mandela, Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela. “Winnie Mandela said no. She said, ‘This camera belongs to
South Africa, it is the property of our country. We cannot allow it to go to
America.’ And that was the end of the story,” said Nzima.
5. It was a turning point in the
struggle against apartheid
While it would be another 14 years before Nelson Mandela was
released from prison—and another four years after that before the apartheid
regime was finally overthrown—the Soweto uprising was an important moment in
the struggle of black South Africans for equal rights. The protests, which
rolled on for months after June 16, garnered international attention—the uprising
was immortalized in numerous books and films, including the Richard
Attenborough-directed Cry Freedom—and ultimately achieved its goal, with the
South African government reversing the Afrikaans decree in July 1976.
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