LittleXplorer

When I was younger, during school holidays, we’d visit my grandmother’s house in Daveyton, where my mother grew up. There was a dent in the metal door that looked like a slightly biggish tennis ball had struck there, hard enough to bend the otherwise sturdy frame. I never questioned its existence—the door had always had a dent in it and that was that, as far as I was concerned.

It wouldn’t be until years later that I thought to ask my mother exactly what had caused it. She told me that one day there was chaos outside, and with childish curiosity, she opened the door to see what was happening. Over their low wall, she could see a hippo, which was what they called armoured vehicles, and atop it stood a soldier who spotted my mother, poking her head out for a look, and took aim at her.

Fortunately, she pulled back, and someone was there to slam the door shut for her just as a sharp, loud thunk smacked into the door, sending my young mother stumbling backwards in fear. Later, when it was quieter, they would discover the dent that would become a permanent part of the household long after my arrival.

Now, if you think a soldier aiming at a child, unprovoked, is unlikely, then I’ll point you to today’s day of commemoration, June 16th.

June 16th: Abridged

What started It?

On the morning of June 16, 1976, Black students took to the streets of Soweto, marching to Orlando Stadium for a rally.

What preceded this event were the injustices felt by all Africans, as well as those other ethnicities suffering under a racially motivated regime, for decades. Students were already tense and mobilising when they became aware of the government’s plans to make learning in Afrikaans and English compulsory for all-black schools.

English and Afrikaans were largely confined to school and infrequent encounters with white people, with nine of the (then) eleven official languages being commonly used.

This was true in the townships, where students were taught in their own languages and seldom used the white-minority favouring ones. It was a shock and an outrage to them, then, to be expected to suddenly learn everything in Afrikaans. Teachers, parents, and students alike argued that if this policy were enforced in black schools, full comprehension of subjects, even the more complicated ones for some, such as mathematics and social sciences, would be greatly compromised.

The Students Mobilize

When their parents, their teachers, and various community leaders and organizations failed, with no little effort from them, to prevent the policy from passing, the students began to organize in earnest between February and May, their boycotting of classes spreading across many schools and townships, aided by the efforts of the Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC). It was around the early days of June when students began meeting to plan a much larger, peaceful demonstration set for the 16th of June.

The Students’ Plan

Then came the fateful day, when students from different schools all over Soweto came together and began their march, songs and chants of protests and determination encouraging the drumming of their school shoes, on hard ground, forward.

The mood among the students was jovial, and placards were held up as the excitement of being part of making a change took hold of everyone. Some students had gone to school that day, and only left once they heard what was happening outside.

Many who didn’t know the exact details of the protest still joined the procession in support. Some of these joiners were much younger students, who weren’t allowed to join but followed the crowd. There are those, amidst the protesters, who; ‘ve said that the plan was to rally at the Orlando stadium and, from there, march to the regional offices of the Department of Education to submit their list of grievances, in hopes that the sheer number of students themselves would be able to convince those in charge of the ill reception of the new policy.

They Meet Armed Forces

By the time they reached Vilakazi Street, near Orlando West Junior Secondary School, now a crowd of upwards of 10,000 students, heavily armed police met them. Two Students knelt before them, in an open space, with their arms raised to show they came in peace. Behind them, the rest of the uniformed crowd followed suit.

The police wouldn’t let them go forward. They deployed tear gas. Chaos ensued. Dogs were let loose on the students. Retaliating, they picked up stones; then, a shot rang out. Records show that Hastings Ndlovu, 15, and Hector Pieterson, 12, were the first children killed.

Afterwards, the number of student deaths increased by the hundreds. Police detained many students, and the next day saw even more of them flooding the township, over 1000 strong, and employing crowd control through indiscriminate shooting.

Over the coming days, it was no longer just the black youth marching against the government. Many black worker, and students from predominantly white universities marched through the city, protesting the killing of children. What began as a peaceful protest became one of many incendiary stones cast against the government.

The Boy Who Held Hector

Above is the world-famous image of eighteen-year-old Mbuyisa Makhubo, who was not part of the protest but hurried outside of his home when he heard the shot fired, concerned for the children. He vaulted over his fence, saw Hector Pieterson there bleeding, and rushed to pick him up, desperately trying to run him toward some help.

Pieterson’s sister, 15-year-old Antoinette Sithole, recognised the boy in Makhubo’s arms by his shoes and demanded to know where the older boy, a stranger to her, was taking her brother. The boy wouldn’t answer, and she only became more distressed when she saw that her brother was bleeding. A car pulled up in front of them to take Pieterson away for help, only for the driver to declare that the young boy was gone.

According to the article I read in Time magazine, Makhubo’s sister describes her brother as the type of person who was known to run into the fray to help someone, and so losing Pieterson sent him down a road of depression, made worse by the police harassing him and accusing him of posing the image to ruin their reputation.

Not long after, the young man disappeared, keeping in touch sporadically as he fled the country, only for the messages to end in 1978. Afterwards, no one knew what became of him, and his family spent years seeking closure.

The Aftermath

The school kids protesting on June 16 were protesting the denial to learn in a language that they understood. They didn’t know what the outcome of that day would be, or the impact it would have on the anti-apartheid struggle.

What began in Soweto spread across the country until, in the weeks following the Soweto uprising, protests by both students and adults alike became commonplace all over. The people were angry, they were tired, and through the course of a single day, had discovered that their children were not off-limits.

I write all of this because as much as I think I know about that day, it is only through my research into it that I learn new things, like the name of the boy whose face would be plastered across the world; and discovering that he had disappeared not long after that first mass protest. So now I’ve written it here, and I hope that means that I will always remember.

Happy Youth Month!