Fatally-wounded Hector Pieterson (12), one of the first fatalities, is carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo on June 16, 1976, with Antoinette Pieterson (17) running alongside. Photo by Sam Nzima. http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa_glance/history/hector-pieterson.htm

The Soweto uprising or Soweto riots were a series of riots in Soweto, South Africa on June 16, 1976 between black youths and the South African authorities. The riots grew out of protests against the policies of the National Party government and its apartheid regime. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 464 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (468 × 605 pixel, file size: 36 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Riots in Soweto. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 464 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (468 × 605 pixel, file size: 36 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Riots in Soweto. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Categories: Stub | Riots ... Johannesburg, including Soweto, from the International Space Station Soweto is an urban area in the City of Johannesburg, in Gauteng, South Africa. ... Year 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the 1976 Gregorian calendar. ... The National Party (Afrikaans: Nasionale Party) (with its members sometimes known as Nationalists or Nats) was the governing party of South Africa from June 4th 1948 until May 9th 1994, and was disbanded in 2005. ... A segregated beach in South Africa, 1982. ...

== Causes of the protests== poo Black students in Soweto protested against the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 which forced all black schools to use Afrikaans and English in a 50-50 mix as languages of instruction. The Regional Director of Bantu Education (Northern Transvaal Region), J.G. Erasmus, told Circuit Inspectors and Principals of Schools that from January 1, 1975 Afrikaans had to be used for mathematics, arithmetic, and social studies from standard five (7th grade), according to the Afrikaans Medium Decree; English would be the medium of instruction for general science and practical subjects (homecraft, needlework, woodwork, metalwork, art, agricultural science). Indigenous languages would be used for religion instruction, music, and physical culture ^[1]. 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Look up Wiktionary:Swadesh lists for Afrikaans and Dutch in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

A 1972 poll had found that 98% of young Sowetans did not want to be taught in Afrikaans. The association of Afrikaans with apartheid prompted black South Africans to prefer English. Even the homelands regimes chose English and an indigenous African language as official languages. In addition, English was gaining prominence as the language most often used in commerce and industry. The 1974 decree was intended to forcibly reverse the decline of Afrikaans among black Africans. The Afrikaner-dominated government used the clause of the 1909 Constitution that recognized only English and Afrikaans as official languages as pretext to do so ^[2]. While all schools had to provide instruction in both Afrikaans and English as languages, white students learned other subjects in their home language.

Punt Janson, the Deputy Minister of Bantu Education at the time, was quoted as saying: "I have not consulted the African people on the language issue and I'm not going to. An African might find that 'the big boss' only spoke Afrikaans or only spoke English. It would be to his advantage to know both languages"' ^[3]. Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu (dull yellow) vs. ...

The decree was resented deeply by blacks as Afrikaans was widely viewed, in the words of Desmond Tutu, then Dean of Johannesburg as "the language of the oppressor". Teacher organizations such as the African Teachers Association of South Africa objected to the decree [1]. Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African cleric and activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. ... In religious terminology, a dean is a title accorded to persons holding cartain positions of authority within a religious heirarchy. ... City motto: Unity in Development Province Gauteng Mayor Amos Masondo Area  - % water 1,644 km² 0. ...

The resentment grew until April 30, 1976, when children at Orlando West Junior School in Soweto went on strike, refusing to go to school. Their rebellion then spread to many other schools in Soweto. A student from Morris Isaacson High School, Tsietsi Mashinini, proposed a meeting on 13 June 1976 to discuss what should be done. Students formed an Action Committee (later known as the Soweto Students’ Representative Council) [2] that organized a mass rally for June 16, 1976 to make themselves heard. is the 120th day of the year (121st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the 1976 Gregorian calendar. ... June 16 is the 167th day of the year (168th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the 1976 Gregorian calendar. ...

In a BBC/SABC documentary broadcast for the first time in June 2006, surviving leaders of the uprising described how they planned in secret for the demonstration, surprising their teachers and families (and the apartheid police) with the power and strength of the demonstration. The British Broadcasting Corporation, usually known as the BBC, is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GB£4 billion. ... SABC is an abbreviation for either South African Broadcasting Corporation - in South Africa or Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council - in the United Kingdom ...

The uprising

The beginning of the riots

On the morning of June 16, 1976, thousands of black students walked from their schools to Orlando Stadium for a rally to protest against having to learn through Afrikaans in school. Many students who later participated in the protest arrived at school that morning without prior knowledge of the protest, yet agreed to become involved. The protest was intended to be peaceful and had been carefully planned by the Soweto Students’ Representative Council’s (SSRC) Action Committee, with support from the wider Black Consciousness Movement. Teachers in Soweto also supported the march after the Action Committee emphasized good discipline and peaceful action. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... June 16 is the 167th day of the year (168th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the 1976 Gregorian calendar. ... A man carries a sign at the September 24, 2005 anti-war protest, a demonstration in Washington, D.C. American Civil Rights March on Washington, leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963. ... The Black Consciousness Movement was a movement which called for non-violent black resistance to the Apartheid government in South Africa. ...

Tsietsi Mashininini led students from Morris Isaacson High School to join up with others who walked from Naledi High School [3]. The students began the march only to find out that police had barricaded the road along their intended route. The leader of the action committee asked the crowd not to provoke the police and the march continued on another route, eventually ending up near Orlando High School. The crowd of between 3,000 and 10,000 students made their way towards the area of the school; at the same time police called for reinforcements of officers.

There are various accounts of what started the massacre which followed. The police had weapons and tear gas while the students were unarmed. Some reports later claimed that the school children were throwing stones, while others claim the protests were peaceful with no violent actions from the children at all.

The police threw canisters of tear gas to disperse the students, who then began throwing stones in retaliation. The gas forced the crowd to draw back a little, but they continued singing and waving placards with slogans including: "Down with Afrikaans", "Viva Azania" and "If we must do Afrikaans, Vorster must do Zulu". A white male police officer drew his handgun and fired a shot, causing panic and chaos. Students started screaming and running and more gunshots were fired. At least four children were shot, the first being Hastings Ndlovu followed by 13-year-old Hector Pieterson. The photograph taken of his body became a symbol of police brutality (see top right). The rioting continued and 23 people, including three whites, died on the first day in Soweto. Among them was Dr Melville Edelstein who had devoted his life to social welfare among blacks. He was stoned to death by the mob and left with a sign around his neck proclaiming 'Beware Afrikaaners'. B. J. Vorster Balthazar Johannes Vorster (December 13, 1915 - September 10, 1983), better known as John Vorster, was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1966 to 1978, and President from 1978 to 1979. ... Zulu (isiZulu in Zulu), is a language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority (over 95%) of whom live in South Africa. ... Hastings Ndlovu, (Born 1961; Died June 16, 1976) was a black Soweto schoolboy who died in the Soweto Riots. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

The violence escalated as the students panicked; bottle stores and beerhalls were targeted as many believed that alcohol was used by the government to control black people.

Emergency clinics were swamped with injured and bloody children as ambulances came to and from. Almost all of the children who were brought in had sustained bullet wounds. The violence had, however, abated with nightfall. Police vans and armored vehicles patrolled the streets throughout the night.

Emotions ran high after the massacre on June 16. Hostility between students and the police was intense, with officers shooting at random and more people joining the protesters. The township youth had been frustrated and angry for a long time and the riots became the opportunity to bring to light their grievances. Children in a township near Cape Town in 1989 In South Africa, the term township usually refers to the (often underdeveloped) urban residential areas that, under Apartheid, were reserved for non-whites (principally black Africans and Coloureds, who were put into separate townships or locations) who lived near or worked...

The 1,500 heavily armed police officers deployed to Soweto on June 17 carried high-powered weapons, including automatic rifles, stun guns, and carbines. They drove around in armoured vehicles with helicopters monitoring the area from the sky. The South African Army was also order on standby as a tactical measure to show military force. Basic crowd control methods were not a part of South African police training at the time, and many of the officers shot indiscriminately, killing many people. This only intensified the students' anger. The South African Army is the army of South Africa. ...

Political context

The repression of the African National Congress and its allies in the 1960s following the Rivonia Trial and the unsuccessful intervention in Zimbabwe's liberation war led to a brief period of relative internal peace in South Africa, but by the mid 1970s the victories of the MPLA and Frelimo in Angola and Mozambique showed that white colonialists could be beaten by military force and at the same time a new Black Consciousness Movement was giving new confidence to young blacks. In this context the Afrikaans issue was, in the view of many participants in the uprising, merely the spark that set the tinder alight - young blacks were looking for the issue over which to confront the apartheid state. For political parties with similar names in other countries, see Northern Rhodesian African National Congress and Zambian African National Congress. ... The Rivonia Trial was an infamous trial which took place in South Africa between 1963 and 1964, in which ten leaders of the African National Congress were tried for 221 acts of sabotage designed to ferment violent revolution. // Origins It was named after Rivonia, the suburb of Johannesburg where 19... The MPLA flag The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Movimiento Popular de Libertação de Angola) is an Angolan political party that has ruled the country since independence in 1975. ... The Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO, pronounced fray-LEE-moo; Portuguese: Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) is a political party that has ruled Mozambique since independence in 1975. ... The Black Consciousness Movement was a movement which called for non-violent black resistance to the Apartheid government in South Africa. ...

The political context cannot be properly understood unless one places it in a regional setting. The Cold War had resulted in a number of local proxy wars when the various liberation struggles became linked with the global power balance between the USA and the USSR. In this regard Southern Africa was a local theatre of the Cold War. The preceived victory of the liberation forces in neighbouring Mozambique thus provided a trigger for the South African youth to take to the streets.

After the uprising, the African National Congress (which had been rebuilding its underground organization in the country) was quick to offer the young militants an opportunity to receive military training and the ANC also rapidly sought to provide a political focus to the rioting by distributing leaflets calling for the death of the National Party's Prime Minister and the freedom of Nelson Mandela. By November 1976 Murphy Morobe, one of the original leaders of the student revolt was back in Soweto, having received military training, attempting to build a cell of Umkhonto we Sizwe the ANC's military wing. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (IPA pronunciation: //) (born July 18, 1918) was the first President of South Africa to be elected in fully-representative democratic elections. ... For other uses of Umkhonto, see Umkhonto (disambiguation) Umkhonto we Sizwe (or MK), translated Spear of the Nation, was the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC). ...

Aftermath

The aftermath of the uprising established the leading role of the ANC in the liberation struggle, as it was the body best able to channel and organize students seeking revenge and the overthrow of apartheid. So, although the BCM's ideas had been important in creating the climate that gave the students the confidence to strike out, it was the ANC's non-racialism which came to dominate the discourse of liberation amongst blacks.

The Soweto Uprising was a turning point in the liberation struggle in South Africa. Prior to this event, the liberation struggle was being fought outside of South Africa, mostly in Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), South West Afrca (later Namibia) and Angola. But from this moment onwards, the struggle became internal and the government security forces were split between external operations and internal operations.

For the state the uprising marked the most fundamental challenge yet to apartheid and the economic (see below) and political instability it caused was heightened by the strengthening international boycott. It was a further 14 years before Mandela was released, but at no point was the state able to restore the relative peace and social stability of the early 1970s as black resistance grew.

Many white South African citizens were outraged at the government's actions in Soweto, and about 300 white students from the University of the Witwatersrand marched through Johannesburg's city centre in protest of the killing of children. Black workers went on strike as well and joined them as the campaign progressed. There was a huge threat of the riots spreading beyond Soweto. The University of the Witwatersrand (pronounced vit-vaters-rant, with flat vowels -- see South African English) is a leading South African university situated in Johannesburg. ... City motto: Unity in Development Province Gauteng Mayor Amos Masondo Area  - % water 1,644 km² 0. ...

Student organizations directed the energy and anger of the youth toward political resistance. Students in Thembisa organized a successful and non-violent solidarity march, but a similar protest held in Kagiso led to police stopping a group of participants and forcing them to retreat, before killing at least five people while waiting for reinforcements. The violence only died down on June 18. Kagiso is a township situated in the Krugersdorp area in Gauteng Province, South Africa. ...

The continued clashes in Soweto caused economic instability. The South African rand devalued fast and the government was plunged into a crisis. ISO 4217 Code ZAR User(s) Common Monetary Area: Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland Inflation 5. ...

Casualties

The accounts of how many people died vary from 200 to 700^[4], with Reuters news agency currently reporting there were "more than 500" fatalities in the 1976 riots. The original government figure claimed only 23 students were killed. The number of wounded was estimated to be over a thousand people.

International reaction

Henry Kissinger, United States Secretary of State at the time, was about to visit South Africa at the time of the riot, and the uprisings cast a negative light on the entire country. Henry Alfred Kissinger (born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923) is a German-born American diplomat, and 1973 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. ... Seal of the United States Department of State. ...

African National Congress (ANC) exiles called for international action and more economic sanctions against South Africa. For political parties with similar names in other countries, see Northern Rhodesian African National Congress and Zambian African National Congress. ...

Images of the riots spread all over the world, shocking millions. The photograph of Hector Pieterson's dead body, as captured by photo-journalist Sam Nzima, caused outrage and brought down international condemnation on the Apartheid government. There were protests against the regime held outside of South Africa in many Western nations. The United Nations imposed even more sanctions on South Africa. There were boycotts and animosity towards the regime internationally. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... This article or section needs to be wikified. ... The foundation of the U.N. The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate co-operation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress and human rights issues. ...

Legacy

Many consider the riots an event which signified the beginning of the end for apartheid. The effects of the riots echoed across the country. After the riots, many black citizens were awakened to the reality of apartheid, and started to resist, while some white citizens also withdrew their support for the government. Despite continuing government crackdowns, popular unrest and opposition to apartheid continued to grow until the end of the 1980s. Local and international pressure led to the negotiated ending of apartheid between 1990 and 1994. This article cites very few or no references or sources. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ...

The Soweto riots are depicted in the 1987 film by director Richard Attenborough, Cry Freedom, and in the musical film Sarafina. The riots also inspired a novel by Andre Brink called A Dry White Season, and a 1989 movie of the same title. In the 2003 film Stander, the Soweto riots start Captain Andre Stander's disillusionment with apartheid. Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, CBE (born August 29, 1923) is a prolific English film and stage actor, and Academy Award, BAFTA, and three-time Golden Globe winning director, producer, and entrepreneur. ... Cry Freedom is a feature film directed by Richard Attenborough, set in the late 1970s, during the apartheid era of South Africa. ... Sarafina! is a South African musical by Mbongeni Ngema depicting apartheid; it was later adapted into a movie starring Leleti Khumalo and Whoopi Goldberg. ... André Philippus Brink (born on 29 May 1935 in Vrede) is a South African novelist. ... A Dry White Season is a 1989 film starring Marlon Brando, Donald Sutherland, and Susan Sarandon. ... Year 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar). ... Stander is a 2003 biographical film about Captain André Stander, a South African police officer who turned into a bank robber, starring Tom Jane. ... André Stander was a police Captain in the robbery and homicide division of the police in Johannesburg, South Africa who began robbing banks in the 1970s. ...

June 16 is now celebrated in South Africa as Youth Day. Youth Day is a holiday dedicated to the youths of a country. ...

See also

• Apartheid
• Black Consciousness Movement
• Desmond Tutu
• Hastings Ndlovu
• Hector Pieterson
• History of South Africa
• Liberation before education
• Soweto
• Steve Biko

A segregated beach in South Africa, 1982. ... The Black Consciousness Movement was a movement which called for non-violent black resistance to the Apartheid government in South Africa. ... Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African cleric and activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. ... Hastings Ndlovu, (Born 1961; Died June 16, 1976) was a black Soweto schoolboy who died in the Soweto Riots. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The history of South Africa is viewed differently by various scholars and by its various population groups because South Africa is a multicultural country. ... Liberation before education was a policy of the ANC from 1976 to 1994 to justify the disruption of education of black children as a means to achieve democracy and the end to Apartheid in South Africa . ... Johannesburg, including Soweto, from the International Space Station Soweto is an urban area in the City of Johannesburg, in Gauteng, South Africa. ... Stephen Biko Stephen Bantu Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a noted nonviolent anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s. ...

References

1. ^ Afrikaans Medium Decree
2. ^ The Rise and Possible Demise of Afrikaans as a Public Language
3. ^ http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blsaJune16decree.htm
4. ^ Cry Freedom by Richard Attenborough

Cry Freedom is a feature film directed by Richard Attenborough, set in the late 1970s, during the apartheid era of South Africa. ...

External links

• "S. Africa marking Soweto uprising." BBC [4].

• Guardian Unlimited audio recording of Antoinette Sithole (Pieterson) on the Soweto uprising. [5]

• The photograph that changed the world, by Jerome Cartillier, Mail & Guardian, June 16, 2006.

• Soweto uprisings . com, an extensive mashup with loads of info on the events on June 16th 1976.

• The Soweto Youth Uprising, 16 June 1976. South African History Organisation [6].