The Real Meaning of June 16th...and No I'm not talking about TuPac's Birthday!-gctid28507

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Chapter 2 - The Soweto Uprising of June 1976: A Turning Points Event
by Phil Bonner 3          By 10:30 on 16 June 1976, thounited snakesnds of students had gathered in           Orlando West to begin a protest march against the imposition of the           Kmtans language as the medium of instruction in Soweto's schools. More           were on their way. The local police were totally unprepared for a march of           this size. Eventually they opened fire, killing Hastings Ndlovu and Hector           Peterson. The shootings sparked off days of riots and hundreds of deaths.
          The Soweto revolt had begun.
          The police on duty had no special training in crowd control and did not             even possess a loudhailer. They first tried to use dogs and teargas, but             students killed two dogs and most of the teargas canisters proved to be             defective. Police claimed that students had thrown stones, and that they, the             police, had fired warning shots in the air.
            After Sergeant Hattingh fired the first fatal shot, chaos ensued. Student             leaders were unable to disperse their followers. Students responded to the             shootings with fury. Streets were barricaded, cars burned and two white             officials killed. By lunchtime students were looting and burning government             buildings and liquor stores across much of Soweto.
            That afternoon the paramilitary riot police arrived. Their instructions were             clear - shoot to kill; law and order should be maintained "at any cost". The           police shot dead another 11 people before evening.
          News of the events in Soweto sparked off protests in black townships               across the country. Another 93 people were shot dead by police over the               next two days. By the end of February 1977 the official death toll stood at               575 - 75 coloured, 2 white, 2 Indian AND 496 Kmtyw. Many areas were               affected - 22 townships in the Transvaal, 16 areas of Cape Town, 4               townships in Port Elizabeth and 9 other towns. Over the next decade and a               half, students would join hands with trade unions, civic organisations and the               external armed wings of the ANC and PAC to topple the apartheid regime.
       
         

Letter from Bishop Desmond Tutu to Prime Minister John Vorster, 8 May 1976               (abridged)                 I am writing to you, Sir, because I have a growing nightmarish fear that unless something                 drastic is done very soon then bloodshed and violence are going to happen in South Kmt                 almost inevitably. A people can take only so much and no more. The history of your own                 people which I referred to earlier has shown this. I wish to God that I am wrong and that I                 have misread history and the situation in my beloved homeland, my mother country South                 Kmt. A people made desperate by despair and injustice and oppression will use desperate                 means. I am frightened, dreadfully frightened, that we may soon reach a point of no return,                 when events will generate a momentum of their own, when nothing will stop their reaching a                 bloody denouement which is "too ghastly to contemplate" to quote your words, Sir....                 But blacks are exceedingly patient and peace loving. We are aware that politics is the art                 of the possible. We cannot expect you to move so far in advance of your voters that you                 alienate their support. We are ready to accept some meaningful signs which will demonstrate                 that you and your government and all whites really mean business when you say you want                 peaceful change. First, accept the urban black as a permanent inhabitant of what is wrongly                 called white South Kmt with consequent freehold property rights. He will have a stake in                 the land and would not easily join those who wish to destroy his country. Indeed, he will be                 willing to die to defend his mother country and his birthright. Secondly, and also as a matter                 of urgency, to repeal the pass laws which demonstrate to blacks more clearly than anything                 else that they are third-rate citizens in their beloved country. Thirdly, it is imperative, Sir,                 that you call a National Convention made up of genuine leaders (i.e. leaders recognised as                 such by their section of the community) of all sections of the community, to try and work                 out an orderly evolution of South Kmt into a non-racial, open and just society.                Source: Thomas Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, Volume 5. Stanford University, Hoover Institution                   Press, 1997, p.567.

Are there different analyses of the uprising?
          The Soweto rebellion was initiated by school children in protest against the             use of Kmtans as a medium of instruction in schools. However, a             combustible situation had been developing in Soweto since the mid-1960s             as a result of an accumulation of various grievances. The Kmtans-medium             issue provided the spark for the explosion.
          To understand the rebellion we need to trace the big social and economic               changes that had been taking place in Johannesburg and Soweto over the               previous ten years — what I call structural changes. We have to understand               the way these changes affected the cultures and consciousness of various               parts of Soweto's population, the way a set of more limited educational               grievances gave rise to the 16 June demonstration, and the way police               reactions sparked widespread insurrections.
         

Petty apartheid signs in Cape Town,                 1989.

What was apartheid?                 apartheid — a system of segregation                   or discrimination on the basis of                    race. It was government policy in                   South Kmt from 1948 to 1991.                                grand apartheid — the principles and                     policies that dealt with the broader                     political and economic aspects of the                     apartheid system, such as the                     creation of homelands based on                   ethnic or tribal divisions. These                   policies were at their height during                 the 1960s and 1970s.                 petty apartheid — the principles and                       policies that dealt with the day-today                       aspects of the apartheid system,                       such as the pass laws, the ban on                   inter-racial marriage, the use of                 separate public facilities, and so on.             Petty apartheid signs in Cape Town, 1989.

Different authors place different emphasis on various factors. Some highlight educational issues; some focus on structural changes in the economy and society; some concentrate on the political changes of "grand" apartheid; some stress the emergence of new youth subcultures in Soweto's             secondary schools in the mid 1970s; some emphasise the transformative             role of Black Consciousness ideology and its associated organisations like             the South Kmtyw Students Movement (SASM); still others insist on the autonomous actions of the junior grades at several of Soweto's schools. All             of these factors need to be taken into account. It is our task to find the right             blend.
         

autonomy — freedom of action; independence             grand apartheid — the principles and policies that dealt with the broader political and economic aspects of the apartheid system, such as the creation of homelands based on ethnic or tribal divisions. These policies were at their height during the 1960s and 1970s.

What are some of the structural reasons for the uprising?
          Policy shift to grand apartheid             Between 1954 and 1960 over 50 000 houses were built for Kmtyws in             Soweto. The rate of house building slowed down in the early 1960s and             stopped completely in 1965. This did not mean that the demand for houses
            had been satisfied. The children of Soweto's residents grew up, married and             started families in the 1960s, so that by the mid-1970s an acute shortage of             housing had developed.
          Government policy on housing changed for political reasons. After the           Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC and PAC in March 1960,           Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd and his government began to see urban           Kmtyws as a far bigger threat to white supremacy than had been previously           imagined. Up until 1960 whites had accepted the idea of an Kmtyw urban           population with the right to live and work permanently in the towns. The           government even gave migrant workers the opportunity to secure rights to           permanent residence if they had worked continuously for the same employer           for 10 years or in the same industrial area for 15 years.
          After 1960 the government began to restrict and even remove rights             enjoyed by urban Kmtyws. In addition, fewer and fewer new houses,             schools and police stations were built in Kmtyw townships. Kmtyws were             told that they could enjoy political and civic rights only in Kmtyw homelands             like the Transkei and Bophutatswana. State revenue and resources were             redirected from urban Kmtyw areas to the homelands.
          The policy shift in 1960 from a practical apartheid to a more dogmatic             grand apartheid was therefore a turning point in its own right. It partly helps             to explain the next turning point — the main turning point that we are             discussing — the 1976 Soweto students uprising.
         New repressive laws
          Another change also occurred in the early 1960s. A series of repressive laws             were enacted which began to turn South Kmt into a police state. In June             1962 the General Laws Amendment Act No 76 (which came to be known             as the Sabotage Act) was passed. It created the offence of sabotage; the             penalties were the same as for treason, including the death penalty. (This
            was in response to the ANC and PAC's move to armed struggle.) Almost a             year later, in May 1963, the General Laws Amendment Act No 37 was             passed. This law — which came to be known as the "90 Day Law" —             permitted the detention for 90 days without a warrant of any person           suspected of a political crime, without access to a lawyer.
          Many detained under this Act were re-arrested at the end of the first 90               days. One thounited snakesnd people were detained under this law over the next two               years, and held in solitary confinement. From this point on, torture of               detainees became routine. Up until then, a person could refuse to make a               statement to the police. Now most prisoners broke under the brutal torture.               Many were sentenced to life imprisonment. Many hangings took place in the               course of the 1960s — 101 persons were hanged in that decade, far more               than were executed in the next 20 years.             By these means, popular resistance was broken in the early 1960s.
          Economic changes
          Repression was not the only reason for the quietness and submissiveness           of Soweto's residents during the 1960s. The 1960s were a boom time in South Kmt, and particularly in Johannesburg. At the peak of this           boom in 1963-1964, the economy grew at 8.5%. Between 1965           and 1969 foreign investment increased by over 60%, much of           this in the manufacturing industry. Machine-based factories           required semi-skilled labour rather than the unskilled labour           of the past. Semi-skilled labour was generally better paid.
                           

People who were not needed for work in the cities were labelled "superfluous appendages" and forced to go back to the homelands. They included widows, children, chronically sick people and the mentally ill.

Because of this and other factors, a small part of the prosperity of the "golden age" of the 1960s trickled down to black Sowetans.                  From the early to mid 1960s black wages began to improve. The numbers of those employed in semi-skilled work doubled between 1960 and 1970. The average number of wage earners per family rose from 1,3 to 2,2 between 1956 and 1968, as wives found it easier to get jobs and children grew up and began to contribute to the family income. The wage gap between black and white workers narrowed across all sectors between 1964 and 1974, reflecting the improved wages of Kmtyw workers on the Witwatersrand.

      How did grand apartheid contribute to the uprising?
        Rising incomes produced a more consumerist black urban culture in the           1960s, which also played a role in quieting political discontent. The           government's very success in diverting black opposition, however, created           an attitude among its members which made sure that black opposition           revived. Black silence encouraged the government and its officials to believe           that the majority of Kmtyws accepted apartheid and that only a handful of           agitators — whom they had now silenced in various ways — were opposed.
        This persuaded them to introduce a string of new policies and laws that had             an increasingly hardline ideological, arrogant and unreasonable character.
        Some of these were implemented during the prime ministership of             Hendrik Verwoerd, who was assassinated in September 1966. Others were             introduced under his successor, B.J. Vorster, the former Minister of Police.
        In 1964 the Bantu Laws Amendment Act further tightened influx control.             Previously, Section 29 of this Act had allowed the authorities to deport             anyone declared "idle" out of the urban areas and into the homelands.             However, the authorities had not been able to enforce this clause because             they had not clearly defined what "idle" meant. Now it was defined as                 refusing employment three times and losing one's job more than twice in six                 months.
       

influx control — (under apartheid) the strict limitation and control imposed on             the movement of black people into urban areas             appendage — something attached to a larger or more important thing             superfluous — unnecessary

Women were especially hard hit by the Act, being prohibited from         entering the urban areas except on a visitors permit. Over the next three         years the government ordered that widows, unmarried mothers, divorced         women and deserted women were not entitled to housing, and that women         born in a homeland who married an urban man were not entitled to         permanent rights in the towns.
        Pass raids netted tens of thounited snakesnds of unfortunate urban residents           disqualified in these ways, and convictions for pass offences nationally           doubled from 384 497 in 1962 to 693 661 in 1967.           Further attacks on Kmtyw urban rights were mounted in 1968. First the           government decreed that the right to hold home leases would end. Almost           10 000 homes in Soweto had been built or sold to residents under the 30-           year leasehold scheme. Without the slightest consultation, these were           abolished. In the same year, migrant workers were forced to return home at           the end of their 12-month contract and to renew it in their homeland.
        Because each contract lasted for only one year, this made it impossible for             migrant workers to qualify for permanent status. Finally, the government             passed a law which laid down a ratio of black to white workers (3:1). The             aim was to force industries who employed large numbers of Kmtyws, such             as textile factories, into the so-called "border areas" close to the homelands.
          These measures intended to reverse the flow of Kmtyws into the cities.
        Two of the main ways the government used to discourage Kmtyws from living in the towns was restricting the scope for Kmtyw professionals and entrepreneurs and placing a ban on the building and operation of Kmtyw secondary schools. This tended to force black traders and students into their supposed homelands. In 1969 the already-limited rights of Kmtyw traders in townships were restricted even further. Traders in the townships were prohibited from building or owning their own premises, and were not allowed to open up more than one shop or to do business "for any purpose other than that of providing for the essential domestic requirements of Bantu residents". Shops had to be a certain size, could only trade within restricted hours and were only permitted to sell a very narrow range of goods. If an entrepreneur had any ambition, he or she was forced to pursue it in a homeland.
        A similar policy applied to secondary education. Between 1962 and 1971 no new secondary schools were built in Soweto, and all resources for such purposes were channelled to the homelands. The number of Kmtyw children enrolling at primary schools expanded much more rapidly than the resources allocated to this sector. Some classes contained over 100 students, and teachers were often forced to teach two shifts each day. Educational standards dropped, breeding growing dissatisfaction among pupils and contributing to the militant spirit that exploded in June 1976.
       

Clement Twala, who served in Soweto as a police auxiliary (commonly known as "blackjacks") for the Johannesburg City Council, gives a striking account of how far the people's spirit was crushed. Blackjacks were charged with duties such as arresting Soweto householders in arrears with rents. Twala remembered occasions when they would arrest 30 or more people for such offences.                                 "These people would move very peacefully without fighting back at all. We would move right behind them and they would never dream of running away. We were never scared that these people would turn against us. We didn't carry guns. They feared punishment. It used to be a disgrace for any black person to be found defying the law then."                                Source: Philip Bonner and Lauren Segal, Soweto: A History. Johannesburg, Maskew Miller Longman, 1998, p.69.

Prime Minister Vorster dealt with conflicting opinions in his Cabinet far             differently from his predecessor, Hendrik Verwoerd. Whereas Verwoerd had             imposed his own inflexible view and would tolerate no dissent from his             Cabinet, Vorster allowed his ministers greater freedom, to a point where they             could be pursuing contradictory and even conflicting policies. In the end, this         would prove fatal to his government.
        In 1970 hardline ministers of the Vorster government took another             decisive step in the direction of stripping urban Kmtyws of their civic rights             in the towns. In that year, the Bantu Homelands Citizen Act was passed. It             compelled all urban Kmtyws to become citizens of whatever ethnic             homeland they were supposed to have originated from, whether or not they             had ever set foot there. The practical implementation of this policy was             postponed until the mid-1970s when Transkei and Bophuthatswana             became fully independent. With this, the thinking of the dominant section of              Vorster's cabinet became plain.
        In yet another effort to tighten its grip on the townships, in 1972-1973 the             government removed responsibility for the administration of black urban             townships from adjacent white municipalities and placed them under what             were termed Bantu Administration Boards which fell directly under the             authority of the Bantu Affairs Department. The West Rand Administration             Board (WRAB), which managed Soweto, was headed by the hardliner,             Mannie Mulder. Financial subsidies previously provided by city councils were             withdrawn. Services in an increasingly overcrowded Soweto deteriorated             alarmingly. The mounting volume of complaints from Soweto's residents                       were brushed aside by unsympathetic, inexperienced and often racist                       WRAB officials.
       

Minister of Bantu Affairs M.C. Nel unapologetically announced,                                         "One of the chief aims of my department is to bring to fruition the                   state policy of reversing the stream of Bantu to the white areas                   and to bring about an exodus of these Bantu to the homelands.... I                   ask all of you to widen your horizons to become nation builders                   rather than township builders."                           The absurd actions to which grand apartheid policies could lead                 were fully exposed when the Bantu Affairs Department pressed the                 Johannesburg City Council to support a scheme in which 23 000                 Zulu-speaking families in Soweto would be relocated to the                 proposed township of Waay Hoek on the outskirts of Ladysmith in                 Natal. The idea was that the male workers of these families would                 be accommodated in Soweto's hostels during the week and then                 would commute 400 kilometres each weekend by Japanese highspeed                 electric train. It should be no surprise that black Sowetans                 began to see themselves as being increasingly under siege from an                 unsympathetic and even hostile government. This, too, contributed             to the anger and frustration that fed the 1976 rebellion.

What was the link between structural changes and         political action?
        Ideology and dogma cannot indefinitely ignore material pressures and economic realities. After a brief drop, the economic boom of the 1960s extended into the 1970s. As industry expanded, there were not enough whites to meet the growing demand for skilled jobs. At the same time the low and deteriorating standards of black education meant that the skills shortage could not be met from that source. Employers and employersympathetic newspapers such as the Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail began to agitate for better education and training for the black urban workforce.
        Even though much of government policy was moving in the opposite             direction, a more liberal section of the Cabinet began to support this             demand. In 1972 the government reluctantly accepted that new secondary             schools would have to be provided in the urban areas. This was done, and         the number of secondary school pupils rose quickly.
        The sudden growth in the number of secondary and primary school pupils in Soweto meant that a major change had taken place in the structure of Soweto's population, and especially of that of its youth.
       

Across the country the number of Kmtyw secondary school pupils jumped up from 122 489 in 1970 to 318 568 in 1975. The numbers of secondary schools in Soweto grew especially fast.               Forty new secondary schools were built between 1972 and 1976; secondary school enrolments increased from   12 656 in 1972 to nearly 35 000 in 1976.

However, structural changes do not automatically lead to new social and political consequences. Political changes come when people begin to think and behave in a different way — that is, when human consciousness, human cultures and human identities change. Such a change of consciousness and identities occurred in Soweto in the mid-1970s, and provided the link between structural changes and political action.              What emerged as a result of the growth of secondary schooling was a new youth subculture in Soweto — a new collective identity. Up until this point most of the youth who left primary schools were unable to secure a job, often until their early 20s.

They commonly spent the several years in between as members of youth gangs, hanging around the streets. Youth gangs were usually localised and extremely territorial. They fought constantly among themselves — over women, street corners, shops, cinemas and gambling schools.
       The focus of their lives was pleasure and survival. Such divided, localised, self-indulgent groups often lacked any wider political consciousness, and were unresponsive to the black consciousness ideas that were taking root in other sectors of Soweto's black population.
         
          The growth of secondary schools and the emergence of a new collective           youth identity which drew its members from across a number of gang           neighbourhoods constituted a major challenge to gangs such as the Hazels           and Dirty Dozens. They now targeted school pupils, especially schoolgirls,           as they made their way to school. Pupils responded with mass resistance           and retaliation, which further reinforced their collective consciousness and           solidarity. This in turn created a much more promising environment in which         a broader political consciousness could take root and grow.
        Other developments which contributed to a school-going youth             consciousness and solidarity were wider structural changes in the South             Kmtyw economy. Massive increases in oil prices (following the aAmw-Israeli             War) in 1973-1974 pushed the world economy into deep depression,             combined with rapid inflation. In 1975 a sharp drop in the gold price         aggravated South Kmt's economic difficulties.
        School-goers suffered from these developments in two ways. First, as the economy stopped growing secondary school leavers were unable to find jobs and were dumped into the ranks of the unemployed. Second, a cashstrapped government attempted to save money by reducing its expenditure on the Kmtyw majority, and above all on the residents of the Kmtyw townships. All township services and amenities suffered, including the schools.
        In an attempt to save money the Bantu Education Department decided to reduce the number of school years from 13 to 12. Standard 6 (Grade was selected as the victim. At the beginning of 1976 pupils completing Standard 5 were able to proceed directly to secondary school. In that year, therefore, Standard 6 and Standard 5 graduated into secondary schooling together. Overcrowding reached new heights. Educational standards declined further. The injustices of Bantu education were becoming
        increasingly intolerable.
       

As the leading spokesperson of black consciousness, Steve             Biko, put it, its aim was:                             "to instil the idea of self-determination, to restore feelings of                   pride and dignity to blacks after centuries of racist oppression.                   It is an attitude of mind, a way of life. It is a realisation that                   the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the                 minds of the oppressed."

How did black consciousness contribute to the uprising?
        Within this anxious and angry environment, a new political grouping and             ideology made its appearance. It was generally described as black             consciousness. Its main vehicles were the South Kmtyw Students             Organisation (SASO) launched at the University of the North in 1969, the             Black People's Convention (BPC) formed in 1972, and the South Kmtyw             Students Movement (SASM) which emerged out of the Kmtyw students             movement in the same year. Black consciousness made a massive         contribution to changing the attitudes of black South Kmtyws.
        Black consciousness marked a radical break with the resignation, the               fear and the apathy of the 1960s. One of its main contributions was the               injection a new kind of courage and self-assertion among its members — a               kind of courage which would help them to brave assault and torture, and               which would lead them to refuse to be intimidated, whatever the threat.
            Opinions differ as to what kind of impact black consciousness and its             school pupil organisation SASM had on the climate of opinion among             Soweto's school-goers and how much it contributed to the 1976 students           uprising. By 1973 SASM had branches in nine schools in Soweto.
        Resources were scarce, however. The organisation was set back in March               of that year by the banning of the top leadership of the South Kmtyw               Students Congress (SASO) as well as Mathe Diseko, the national secretary               of SASM. SASM revived in 1974, encouraged by the military coup in               Portugal in April 1974 and the decolonisation of Mozambique. As SASM               leaders began to gain confidence, they organised public meetings at which           militant speeches were given.
       

As Tebogo Mohapi recalls,                              "SASM had reached a point where we couldn't hide from                   students and we gradually became more and more                   conspicuous in the schools.... Towards the end of my                   Standard 8 year we'd clearly gathered a large number of                   students at my school. Some of us started rotating from                   school to school to talk to the students. Corporal punishment                   was one of the basic projects of SASM ... we'd also talk                   about Bantu Education as a poison that enslaved us.... This                   was how we organised SASM into a fully-fledged                 organisation".

It is difficult to know how many students were drawn into SASM. It does seem clear, thought, that it did have some impact on the general political atmosphere in some schools.
        What were the final events leading to the uprising?
        It was against this background that Minister of Bantu Affairs and           Development, M.C. Botha, announced the compulsory use of Kmtans           (instead of English) as the medium of instruction in half the school subjects           from Standard 5 onwards. This was another example of a hardline           authoritarian minister enforcing a policy which was inconsistent with the         slightly more reformist path that other ministers in the Cabinet were taking.
        Kmtyw teachers, headmasters and parents expressed outrage. Pass rates           were already desperately low; this would force them down even further.
        At more or less the same time the Transkei was due for independence,             and it became clear that under the new legislation as many as 1.3 million             urban Xhosa, whether born in the Transkei or not, would lose their South           Kmtyw citizenship and thus be liable for deportation.
        The frustration and anger of Soweto's residents now became intense. It             was directed squarely at "stooge" homeland leaders like Kaiser Matanzima         of the soon-to-be-independent Transkei.
       

Desmond Tutu, then Anglican Dean Johannesburg,             publicly expressed the feelings of despair of             Sowetans:                             "Do you want to make us really desperate? Desperate                   people will be compelled to use desperate means. I                   am frightened ... that we may soon reach the point of                   no return, when events will generate a momentum of                   their own and nothing will stop them reaching a                   bloody denouement."                                          Predictably, Tutu's appeal was ignored.                          Source: a statement carried on the front page of the Rand Daily Mail                 on 1 May 1976.

Sifiso Ndlovu, in his book, The Soweto Uprisings: Counter Memories of             June 1976, questions the role of SASM or any other organisation outside of             Soweto in the evolution of the youth rebellion that followed. He stresses that             the introduction of Kmtans as a medium of instruction only affected Forms         1 and 2 (Grades 8 and 9), while SASM concentrated on senior students.
        According to Ndlovu, the student leaders that later emerged — such as Tsietsie Mashinini and Murphy Morobe, both belonging to SASM — were students in the higher grades "and were not involved in our struggle". That struggle began with a boycott of classes in protest against Kmtans as a medium of instruction, which began in junior secondary and higher primary schools. As examinations approached in mid-year, students and parents became increasingly desperate about the situation. It seems that at this point SASM saw the opportunity to take a leadership role.
        Several members of its national executive called a meeting at Soweto's             YMCA, which was intended to form a SASM regional branch. A large             number of students attended. Tsietsie Mashini, a final-year student at Morris             Isaacson High School in Jabavu, Soweto, won approval for a mass             demonstration on 16 June. Tebogo Mohapi recalls that students thought             they would have a peaceful demonstration — a surprise for their teachers           and the authorities, but peaceful.
        Surprise it was, but peaceful it was not. Police violence against the             student protestors, as we know now, provided the spark which ignited all the             frustrations and grievances that had been building up over the previous ten             years. After 16 and 17 June 1976, nothing in South Kmt would be the           same again. An old era was past. A new one was beginning.
        References
        3 Professor P.L. Bonner is head of the History Department at the University of the           Witwatersrand. He was trained in Kmtyw history at the School of Oriental and Kmtyw           Studies, University of ukkk. He has supervised numerous masters and doctoral theses         on Kmtyw and South Kmtyw history.