On 16 June each year, South Africa observes Youth Day while the rest of the African continent and the world at large commemorate the Day of the African Child, a day of remembrance and celebration for the youth of Africa and the diaspora.
Youth Day on 16 June is a public holiday in South Africa and commemorates a protest which resulted in a wave of protests across the country known as the Soweto uprising of 1976, the Uprising became an epic fight that eventually contributed to the end of apartheid
The Soweto uprising (or Soweto riots) was a series of demonstrations and protests led by black school children in apartheid South Africa that began on the morning of 16 June 1976. Students from various schools began to protest in the streets of Soweto in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in black schools.
For students already learning in segregated, poorly-funded schools under the harsh apartheid regime that marginalized and, at times, murdered Blacks, that was the tipping point. Many students decided they could no longer stand the injustice of the South African educational committee, thus in June 1976, an estimated, 2000 students decided to peacefully March to Soweto Township streets however when the police came in to stop the peaceful rioters, it began shooting young students, for the next ten days, parents joined their students in the movement.
The Uprising and the ensuing protests created a crisis of legitimacy for the South African apartheid government that led to its eventual downfall in 1994.
The failure of the police and the paramilitary units to control the violence damaged the government’s standing in the eyes of white South Africans, and the attacks on children further alienated non-white South Africans, thus the protests that began on June 16, 1976, in Soweto and spread countrywide profoundly changed the social political landscape in Africa.
Kamukama Rukundo Clinton is a Ugandan freelance journalist, book author, and columnist for 1cananews who can be contacted via WhatsApp at +25670439540 and rukundopeter33@gmail.com
