UnderGround Theory: June 16 Series - The Uprising.

On June 16 of 1976, more than 10,000 school children went into the streets of Soweto (South Western Township) to protest against educational apartheid. As they were walking and singing peacefully for a planned rally at Orlando Football Stadium, a white policeman threw a tear-gas canister, without any warning, and throughout the rest of the riot police fired their automatic weapons on the students. At least four of the protesting youths were killed. This ignited what is known as the SOWETO UPRISING, the bloodiest episode of riots since the early sixties.

The aim of the protest by the Soweto schoolchildren was to prevent the white government enforcing Afrikaans as the language of instruction to black pupils. They already suffered discrimination with the inferior “Bantu Education” created especially by the apartheid regime.

June 16, 1976, and the defiant young black opposition to white rule, led to many South Africans of that generation stopping their studies or going into exile. Some never went back to school.

The first victim was 13 year old school boy, Hector Petersen, whose near lifeless body in the arms of Mbuyisa Makhubo came to symbolize the struggle of the youth of South Africa. A picture taken by Sam Nzima of the dying schoolboy was soon on almost every front page of every newspaper across the world.

Violence continued, engulfing the West Rand Administration Board and various Government beerhalls, as well as private businesses. The unrest went on for days and started to spread across the country, so the demands of the students became broader. They wanted all those who had been detained to be released, and they anted to end racial discrimination. The students called on their parents to stay at home and many of them did.

The students took it upon themselves to put an end to racial discrimination, and to start a revolution with the expected result. - by Unconscious Reality