Heroism of South African youth saluted

Soweto Uprising, 1976.

The Soweto Uprising of June 16, 1976, was the culmination of six decades of struggle for national liberation in South Africa. It marked the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime, which had begun assuming the mantle of British colonialism in 1948.

As the struggle in South Africa unfolded, it drew in progressive forces throughout the world. Everyone who wanted to fight against racism in their own country, or support the national liberation struggles in the Mideast or Indochina, had to incorporate the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and its spin-off in Zimbabwe.

The spark that set off the students—being forced to learn in Afrikaans, that misnamed, minor-league language used by the oppressors, who pretended to call themselves Africans—was fueled by decades of brutal oppression and harsh exploitation.

What happened in Soweto on June 16, 1976,was truly a historic demonstration. What follows are selections from statements by the African National Congress, the Youth Wing of the ANC and the South African Communist Party, presenting what they feel are the lessons of the Soweto Uprising.

—G. Dunkel

Selection from ANC Youth League Statement, issued June 14. Full statement at www.anc.org.za/youth/

June 16, 1976: Epitome Of Youth Struggles

The events that came to pass that fateful day and continued for months thereafter, engulfing the country in flames, forever entrenched the role of the youth as one of the motive forces of our revolution. It is therefore no fallacy that South Africa’s youth earned their stripes in the battlefield as brave foot soldiers who led the charge from the front.

As we commemorate 30 years of the 1976 student uprisings that altered the political landscape of our country forever, we must pay homage to all those who dedicated their lives and service to the attainment of our liberation, and placed themselves at harm’s way so we could all be free. It is the spirit of their dedication to the struggle and their selfless commitment to the attainment of its goals that must continue to inform our political program, as we seek to advance and realize what they stood for.

Letter from President Thabo Mbeki

Long live the memory of the June 16 martyrs!

Issued June 16. Full statement at www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2006/at23.htm

Our movement was 64 years old when the Soweto Uprising exploded in the dusty streets of our townships, acting as a powerful force that took our struggle for national liberation to even higher levels of militancy and intensity.

From the very first day, our movement understood that the Uprising constituted a new and critically important chapter in the struggle it had led for over six decades already. It therefore welcomed the Uprising, saluted the young patriots who were ready to die for freedom, and resolved to do everything to support the fighting youth of our country, integrating them in the broad struggle for national liberation.

From a 1986 speech by Joe Slovo, the secretary general of the South African Communist Party, which outlines the political and organizational context of the Uprising. Complete source available at www.sacp.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1372&Itemid=67

July 30th, 1986

65TH Anniversary of the South African Communist Party

When South African communists met in Cape Town 65 years ago they planted the first seed in our continent of a class party of the working people guided by Marxism-Leninism.

The founding congress of the African National Congress had already taken place nine years earlier. It brought into existence the first modern national liberation movement in Africa. ...

Class exploitation and national oppression-the two most salient and interdependent realities of South Africa’s socio-economic structure-became the sources of two complementary streams of revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary organization. ...

The 40th anniversary of the 1946 passive resistance campaign and the 25th anniversary of the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 symbolize both the divide and the continuity of the phase of militant mass non-armed defiance and the inevitable evolvement of a strategy in which organized, revolutionary violence became an essential ingredient of the political struggle.

The 10th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising in 1976 reminds us of the emergence of organized youth-the young lions-as one of the major social forces in the revolutionary line-up.