HIS T ORY
Remembering the
significance of Youth Day RYLAND FISHER writes that the best way to pay tribute to young people who gave their lives in 1976 is to make sure that young people now and in the future have no reason to protest other political organisations in 1990. This resulted in our first democratic elections on 27 April 1994, just over 27 years ago. Mandela, of course, had spent 27 years in prison for his resistance to apartheid.
Similarities and differences As expected, there are similarities and differences between the youth of 1976 and the youth of 2021. One of the differences is that while the youth of 1976 wanted to break down the apartheid state, the youth of 2021 have an opportunity to help build a democratic state. The 1976 generation saw their task as opposing everything that was being done by the apartheid state, effectively making the country ungovernable, because black people were not allowed to vote or have a say in decisions affecting their lives. The youth of today can participate in our democracy in many different ways: through voting for their preferred political party at election times, to participating in nongovernmental pressure groups, to joining protest actions if they believe their voice is not being heard.
Feeling betrayed Over the past few years, I have been part of a process of dialogues where we spoke about the South Africa we want to live in, and we found that many young people feel betrayed by our democracy and our leaders. Young people, by virtue of being the majority, feel the brunt of unemployment – the
“While the youth of 1976 wanted to break down the apartheid state, the youth of 2021 have an opportunity to help build a democratic state.” 2
FAST FACT
The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 392 on 19 June 1976 which strongly condemned the killings and the apartheid government. official figure is around 30 per cent, but some economists have estimated that the youth unemployment rate could be as high as 60 per cent. The state of our economy could be blamed in part for this sorry state of affairs, but so could bad planning and policy making. The ANC, which has been governing South Africa for the past 27 years, has often taken decisions in the interest of the party and not the people they are meant to serve. The best way to pay tribute to young people who gave their lives in 1976 is to make sure that young people would, in future, have no reason to protest because they would have free education and health care, access to decent jobs and housing, access to proper justice and the freedom to live their lives and enjoy their youth without fear of being shot and killed in our violent country. We must not only make sure that the kind of massacre that happened in Soweto in 1976 never happens again. We must also make sure that the conditions that led to the massacre no longer exist.
IMAGES: SUPPLIED, ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
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une 16 1976 will forever be etched in our memories by Sam Nzima picture of a bloodied 12-year-old Hector Pieterson, being carried by an emotional Mbuyisa Makhubu (then around 18) while Hector’s 17-year-old sister Antoinette runs frantically beside him. As far as could be ascertained, Pieterson was the second child to be shot by police during the protest by high school learners in Soweto against being taught in Afrikaans. The first protester to die was Hastings Ndlovu, 15, whose death was not recorded by photographers. In some ways, this was a forerunner to what is happening today with the advent of social media and fancy cameras on mobile phones: It’s almost like some things never happened because they were not caught on camera or posted on social media. Hundreds more were to be killed in the days and weeks that followed June 16 1976, not only in Soweto but throughout the country where other schools also joined the protests. Youth Day has its genesis in one of the worst massacres in South African history. Until the ANC government changed its name, declared it an official public holiday and cut it to one day: June 16 and 17 had always been known as Soweto Days. Throughout the country, the days became unofficial holidays. Many historians credit the events of June 1976 in Soweto for the revival of the resistance inside South Africa which finally led to the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners and the unbanning of the ANC and
Y O U T H D AY
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