Soweto Uprising (1976): Students Against Apartheid Education

The Soweto uprising began on the morning of 16 June 1976, when thousands of black schoolchildren in Soweto, near Johannesburg, marched against a rule forcing them to be taught in Afrikaans. Police opened fire, killing 12-year-old Hector Pieterson and others, and the protests spread across South Africa over the following months. The uprising is remembered as a turning point in the struggle against apartheid, the system of racial segregation enforced by the white minority government.

Background: Bantu Education

Under the Bantu Education Act of 1953, black South Africans were educated in a separate, deliberately inferior school system. Classes were overcrowded, teachers were poorly paid and spending per black pupil was a small fraction of that on white pupils.

Soweto (from “South Western Townships”) was the largest black township in the country, housing about a million people in poor conditions. By the mid-1970s its secondary schools held a growing number of politically aware teenagers, influenced by the Black Consciousness Movement associated with Steve Biko, which urged black people to reject inferiority and organise for themselves.

The Afrikaans Medium Decree

In 1974 the Department of Bantu Education ruled that in black secondary schools, mathematics, arithmetic and social studies should be taught in Afrikaans, with general science and practical subjects in English. Many pupils and teachers did not speak Afrikaans well, and to them it was the language of the government and police.

Protests began early in 1976. At the end of April pupils at Orlando West Junior Secondary School refused to attend classes, and in May the boycott spread. Student leaders, including Tsietsi Mashinini of Morris Isaacson High School and members of the South African Students’ Movement, formed an action committee and planned a mass march for 16 June.

What happened on 16 June

On the morning of 16 June thousands of pupils, commonly estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000, set out from schools across Soweto to gather at Orlando Stadium. They carried placards against Afrikaans and sang freedom songs. The march was intended to be peaceful.

Police blocked the route near Orlando West High School. Accounts differ on the exact sequence, but after a confrontation in which some students threw stones, police fired tear gas and then live ammunition into the crowd. Hector Pieterson was among the first killed, as was 15-year-old Hastings Ndlovu.

The photographer Sam Nzima of The World newspaper captured Mbuyisa Makhubo, an older student, carrying the dying Hector, with his sister Antoinette running beside them. The photograph was published worldwide and became the symbol of the uprising.

Anger turned on symbols of the state. Government buildings, beer halls and vehicles were set on fire, and two white men, including the welfare official Melville Edelstein, were killed by crowds. The police brought in reinforcements, and shooting continued over the following days.

Spread of the unrest

Protests spread from Soweto to other townships in the Transvaal and then to Cape Town, the Eastern Cape and elsewhere. In Cape Town, students of mixed-race (“coloured”) communities joined in solidarity. Strikes and stay-aways by workers followed in August and September 1976.

The government withdrew the Afrikaans requirement in July 1976, but the unrest continued into 1977. In September 1977 Steve Biko died from injuries suffered in police custody, and in October the government banned 19 Black Consciousness organisations and two newspapers.

Key people

Tsietsi Mashinini, a 19-year-old pupil at Morris Isaacson High School, emerged as the best-known student leader. He helped plan the march and later led the Soweto Students’ Representative Council before escaping into exile, where he died in 1990. Other organisers included members of the South African Students’ Movement, a school-based group influenced by Black Consciousness thinking.

Hector Pieterson, a 12-year-old pupil, was not a leader but became the face of the uprising through Sam Nzima’s photograph. Nzima later said he faced harassment from the security police after the picture was published. Mbuyisa Makhubo, the youth who carried Hector, went into hiding and then exile; his family last heard from him in the late 1970s, and his fate remains unknown.

Steve Biko, the leading thinker of Black Consciousness, did not organise the march, but his ideas about black pride and self-reliance shaped the student generation of 1976. His death in police custody the following year added to the anger that the uprising had released.

Death toll

Figures for the dead remain disputed. The government at first reported 176 deaths for the opening days. The official Cillié Commission of Inquiry counted 575 deaths in the unrest up to February 1977, the great majority caused by police, and thousands injured. Some researchers believe the real number was higher, because many deaths were never recorded.

Consequences and legacy

The uprising badly damaged South Africa’s international standing. On 19 June 1976 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 392, condemning the government’s violence. Campaigns for sanctions and boycotts, such as those of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain, gained new support.

Thousands of young people left the country after 1976. Many joined the armed wing of the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe, and the exiled ANC was revived by a new generation. Inside South Africa, students, workers and community groups developed the organisations that would lead the mass resistance of the 1980s.

After the end of apartheid, 16 June became Youth Day, a public holiday, in 1995. The Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum opened in Soweto in 2002, near the place where he was shot. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission later examined the police response in 1976 as part of its investigation of human rights violations.

The uprising is often compared with the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. Both were shootings of unarmed protesters by police, but Soweto led by young students ended the period of relative quiet that followed Sharpeville and opened the final phase of resistance that ended with Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990.

Myths and facts

A common simplification is that the uprising was only about language. Afrikaans was the trigger, but students and their parents were also protesting against the whole Bantu Education system, overcrowded schools, pass laws and the lack of political rights. This explains why the unrest continued long after the language decree was withdrawn.

It is also sometimes said that Hector Pieterson was the first person killed on 16 June. Hastings Ndlovu may have been shot earlier the same morning, and historians caution that the exact order cannot be established. Pieterson’s death became the best known because it was photographed.

Timeline

• 1953: The Bantu Education Act creates a separate school system for black South Africans.
• 1974: The Afrikaans Medium Decree is issued.
• April–May 1976: Pupils at Orlando West Junior Secondary School begin a class boycott, which spreads.
• 16 June 1976: Police fire on marching students in Soweto; Hector Pieterson is killed.
• 19 June 1976: UN Security Council Resolution 392 condemns the killings.
• July 1976: The government withdraws the Afrikaans requirement.
• 12 September 1977: Steve Biko dies in police custody.
• 19 October 1977: The government bans Black Consciousness organisations.
• 1995: 16 June becomes Youth Day, a national public holiday.

Why it matters

The Soweto uprising showed that a new generation would not accept apartheid, and it turned a dispute over language into a nationwide revolt. It shifted world opinion firmly against the South African government and fed the movement that eventually brought majority rule in 1994.