It is ironic that the first known political activist, of the day, to be arrested was George Wauchope, who was the Chairman of the Johannesburg Central Branch of the B.P.C.Magaute Molefe, Administrative Secretary at the Head Office of the B.P.C., followed. By the end of July 1976 almost all active members of the B.P.C. in Johannesburg had been detained, including the President, Hlaku Rachidi and the Secretary General, Thandisizwe Mazibuko.
The flood of young people into exile after the uprisings served as a serious indictment on all the liberation movements. The fact is that prior to June 1976, there wasn’t enough pressure exerted on the South African regime military either because the organisations lacked the capacity or the political will to do so.
The formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF), which the B.C. camp aptly named Uniroyal, Dunlop and Firestone after the tyre companies because of the number of necklace murders they carried out against anybody that disagreed with them or presented better arguments to their, was an effort on part of one of these organisations to show a presence in the country.
In 1978 at the Modder Bee Prison where most activists were imprisoned after the banning of the B.C. organisations, some turn coats, as one would expect them, went all out to attack the B.P.C. and the Black Consciousness Philosophy. This came as a result of a Radio Freedom broadcast which condemned the Committee of Ten – forerunner to today’s civic movement in this country – and thus the B.P.C. as “sell-outs” who deserved the firing squad. This broadcast was heard by inmates at the Modder Bee Prison.
In 1979, some of these turn coats went about telling members of the Azainian Peoples Organisation (AZAPO), which was founded on the 28th of April 1978 and had most its leadership harassed, imprisoned and banned, that if they did not disband by the end of July 1979, they would not be held responsible for what would happen to AZAPO and B.C. adherents. Several meetings called to try and address these tensions failed and that in fact was the beginning of the “politics of intolerance” and political hegemony among the oppressed in the country.
Very inflammatory statements against AZAPO in this same year by one cleric after the abortive Ted Kennedy visit to South Africa did not make things any easier.
It is indeed ironic and sad that some of the B.C. cadres that fled the country in the mid-eighties to seek political asylum in foreign countries did so not in flight from savage Boer repression, but form the UDF activists who were hunting them down with obvious intention of killing them in the savage manner that they had grown accustomed to and which had become their trademark, the necklace – Black South Africa’s curse of the century!
All these things were done with the misplaced hope that the B.C.M. would be removed from the South African political arena. How wrong they were!
CONCLUSION The events leading up to the June16 1976 uprising, the event itself and its aftermath made a significant contribution to the freedom we enjoy in South Africa today. The courage and militancy displayed by those fearless young people on that faithful day, against armed and trigger happy apartheid soldiers, will forever be remembered in the history of South Africa. In declaring June 16 as South Africa’s Youth Day our government recognized the role played by the youth of 1976 in achieving democracy in South Africa.
President Mandela when addressing a rally on June 16 1994 remarked that “the brave young people of the 1976 generation are today eminent premiers, ministers and members of parliament. Today they are indeed the premiers and members of parliament.
Whist the Soweto uprising sparked a movement that led to the dismantling of apartheid, it is extremely tragic that so many young people were killed on the road to justice and democracy. Those schoolchildren who were murdered on June 16, 1976 will always be remembered by new generations of students in South Africa and everywhere in the world. – by Submerged Knowledge
No comments:
Post a Comment