The Soweto Uprisings: Counter Memories of June 1976

Introduction to this New Edition

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The exact details of what took place on 16 June 1976 – a day that marked the brutal death of schoolchildren like Hector Pieterson, Hastings Ndlovu, and others – remain highly contested more than 40 years after the event. This is despite the availability of first-hand eyewitness accounts and archival materials stored at various depots, repositories, and research institutions around South Africa.² On Wednesday, 16 June 1976, parents working in nearby Johannesburg and towns in the East and the West Rand were unaware of the events taking place in their community that would catapult consciousness of the liberation struggle across the globe. An estimated crowd of 10 000 students were gathering in Orlando West, along Vilakazi Street, next to Phefeni Junior Secondary School (PJSS) and Orlando West High School to protest against Bantu Education in general and, specifically, the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in selected schools in Soweto. Township residents had long regarded education as a means of empowering their children, and as such, students’ grievances were allied against apartheid and other racially based government policies. As a result, students, teachers, and parents, as members of a given society and also as agents of change, were at the forefront of protest and challenge during the uprisings.³

To understand the Soweto uprisings we need to contextualise the event within the political economy of South Africa during the 1970s. The first part of this book is about the historiography and origins of the uprisings – there exist different schools of thought, which are discussed in Chapter 1: The Historiography of the Soweto Uprisings.⁴ The second part of the book is about the commemoration and memorialisation of the Soweto uprisings.⁵ These important issues are discussed in Chapters 3 and 4.

Concerning historiography and the origins of the uprisings, I subscribe to the school of thought that focuses on epistemological factors. This approach is underpinned by language, cognitive, and educational factors. These causal factors are largely influenced by the use and abuse of Afrikaans for ideological purposes by the apartheid regime and the Broederbond. Throughout the colonial era, education in Africa, including in white-ruled southern Africa, was essentially predicated on using a foreign language as a medium of instruction; that is, the language of the colonial master. According to Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane, colonialism was not a momentary act of violence that stunned Africans’ ancestors and then ended. The physical struggle against African societies was only the beginning of a process in which the initial act of conquest was buttressed and institutionalised by ideological activities. The supremacy of the whites, their values and civilisation, was only won when the culture and the value system of the defeated Africans was reduced to nothing and when the Africans themselves loudly admitted the cultural hegemony of their conquerors.⁶ Therefore, implementation of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction on a 50:50 basis with English in selected schools in Soweto was an ideological tool underpinned by cultural imperialism and political indoctrination. The idea was to break the hegemony of English inculcated in the minds of most African students who had received secondary education and instil in them a similar love for Afrikaans as a language. The apartheid regime hoped that making African children imbibe Afrikaans at secondary and some higher primary schools would produce a collaborationist generation, fluent in Afrikaans, who, as future leaders, would be better equipped servants to protect the interests of the ruling white minority regime.⁷

In educational and cognitive terms, linguists and psycholinguists agree, however, that the use of the child’s mother tongue as a medium of instruction in the school system has significant advantages over the use of a foreign language such as English and Afrikaans. These issues were pertinent to Soweto students in 1976. Research carried out elsewhere on the African continent confirms that the use of indigenous African languages in education is advantageous in the learning process.⁸ M.C. Botha, the Minister of Bantu Education, would later concede this fact two days after the uprisings, when he said: ‘The introduction of a foreign language as a medium in the primary school was a backward step educationally with which the department would not like to be associated: Concept formation and epistemological understanding at this stage takes place best through the vernacular.’⁹ The epistemological school of thought emphasises the importance of both educational and cognitive causal factors inside and outside the classroom. I will provide the historical context defining these important causal factors.

When the British Parliament accepted the Union of South Africa Act in 1909 without amendment, it was obvious that Africans were both indispensable and expendable. South Africa would be a ‘white man’s country’ built on an African proletariat. It is therefore apparent that when the Union of South Africa was established in 1910 all the white centres of power in South Africa were at one with regard to two matters: that the whites had to unite because they shared a common destiny; and, that they had a common responsibility to manage the ‘natives’ (Africans). Sections 26 (d) and 44 (c) of the 1909 South Africa Act provided that in the Union of South Africa only people of European descent could become senators and members of the House of Assembly. Since the provinces had legislation limiting the vote to males, only European men could become prime ministers, senators and be representatives in the legislative assembly. Having secured the protection of the European race by preventing ‘natives’ from having democratic representation, the 1909 South Africa Act entrenched European languages as laid down in Section 137: ‘… both the English and Dutch languages shall be treated on a footing of equality, and possess and enjoy equal freedom, rights, and privileges; all records, journals … shall be kept in both languages … [The official medium of instruction in schools will be in both languages].’¹⁰

The 1909 South Africa Act excluded Africans as citizens of South Africa, their own land, and prevented African languages from being recognised as social institutions in the eyes of the law or in the country’s constitution, which entrenched two official foreign European languages. According to Abnerson Moyisi Majeke, these were perhaps the earliest shots fired on the ‘Soweto’ of June 1976. The point here is that education policy, since the establishment of the Union of South Africa, never wavered from rigid apartheid lines. The 1910 Policy Paper on Language is also instructive in this regard. It consolidated the exclusive use of English and Dutch (the latter would, in 1925, be replaced by Afrikaans) as languages (media) of instruction in South African schools.¹¹

On 15 July 1922, F.H.P. Cresswell, leader of the English-dominated South African Labour Party, and General Hertzog, leader of the Afrikaner-based National Party, met formally to discuss the possible formation of an election pact between the two parties. What the Pact government of 1924 achieved was to cement the use of Afrikaans as an official language in South Africa. Section 1 of Act No. 8 of 1925 amended the 1909 South Africa Act and the use of English and Afrikaans on a 50:50 basis by proclaiming: ‘The word Dutch in … the South Africa Act of 1909, and wherever else that occurs in the said Act, is hereby declared to include Afrikaans’. Therefore, Section 137 of the South Africa Act now read: ‘… both the English and Afrikaans languages shall be treated on a footing of equality, and possess and enjoy equal freedom, rights, and privileges’. Afrikaans, like both Dutch and English, is a Germanic language, and therefore a foreign language in the African continent. In 1973, the Department of Bantu Education issued a policy document, Circular No. 2 of 1973 entitled, ‘Medium of Instruction in Secondary Schools (and STD 5 Classes) in White Areas’. Section B, Point 5 of this circular correlates to the 1909 and 1925 Acts by privileging the use of English and Afrikaans as media of instruction in African schools on a 50:50 basis. It simply meant that white interests came first. The 1973 circular states:

Because of these various considerations it may appear that the only (or easiest solution) will be to continue with the present policy of employing both English and Afrikaans as school media on a 50:50 basis. However, it must be stressed that it will be in the interest of pupils to use one medium only. Therefore where it is at all possible an attempt must be made to institute single-medium schools. In thickly populated areas where both English and Afrikaans are strongly represented, and where there are sufficient schools, some schools for example, might use Afrikaans exclusively while others would use English medium only. There are other areas where the White population is so homogenous as far as home language is concerned, that single-medium Afrikaans schools or single-medium English schools are the obvious solution.¹²

The process of enforcing Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in African schools, initiated clandestinely by the Broederbond, was accelerated during the early 1970s by the Department of Bantu Education, whose minister, M.C. Botha, and his deputy, Andries Treurnicht, were prominent members of the Broederbond. In fact, Treurnicht was a former chairperson of the organisation. Soweto and other urban areas were designated as ‘white areas’ as opposed to Bantustans, which were located mainly in rural areas. English and Afrikaans were the languages spoken by the white minority, while African languages such as isiZulu and Sesotho remained the most-spoken languages in the region of Southern Transvaal and the city of Johannesburg. In terms of the Department of Bantu Education policy, Soweto schools were under the jurisdiction of the Southern Transvaal region, which included Johannesburg. However, apartheid policies, as formulated by the ruling National Party, did not extend formal South African citizenship to Africans, who required special permission to reside in the Southern Transvaal region. Under the Urban Areas Act, first championed by the likes of Jan Smuts in 1923, Africans born in Johannesburg were subjected to the humiliation of merely being allowed to ‘visit’ South Africa at large as citizens of their respective ‘tribal homelands’. Under Section A of the Department of Bantu Education’s Circular No. 2 of 1973 it was argued that although Standard 5 (now Grade 7) would remain part of the higher primary school, it was in reality the first year of the junior secondary stage of education. In all secondary schools (including Standard 5 classes) falling under the jurisdiction of ‘white areas’, the medium of instruction had to be either exclusively Afrikaans or exclusively English. Section A, Point 6 of the policy document declared:

In order to determine whether English, or Afrikaans, or both, should be used as the medium of instruction at a particular secondary school (or Standard 5 class) the criterion to be used shall be which of the two languages is dominant in the White community of the city/town where the school is situated.¹³

Most publications and historiography on the Soweto uprisings do not analyse the policy documents of the Department of Bantu Education. For example, when considering historical events of 1973 and 1974, authors prefer to focus on the worker movement and the strikes of 1973. They also do not consider the fact that African teachers were also members of the African working class. These authors also pay attention to the fall of the military regime in Portugal, and the liberation of Portuguese colonies in Africa accompanied by the rallies organised by students affiliated to the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in South Africa. These pertinent issues will be elaborated upon in this book.¹⁴

But those who focus on educational and pedagogical issues highlight another important policy document, issued by the Department of Bantu Education in 1974. This policy document, like Circular No. 2 of 1973, influenced the origins of the Soweto uprisings. The Regional Department of Bantu Education Circular No. 2 of 1974 on the implementation of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in Southern Transvaal was signed by W.C. Ackerman, Regional Director of Bantu Education, on 29 August 1974, and is explicit in promoting the 50:50 language policy.¹⁵ The question is, what were the policy implications of the 1973 and 1974 circulars emanating from the Department of Bantu Education?

Beban Chumbow asserts that language is the normal medium used for the communication of knowledge and skills in all educational systems – particularly those which are instructional. Thus, knowledge and skills are best acquired through effective communication. Chumbow further contends that education and training in whatever form require imparting