Soweto uprising

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The Hector Pieterson Memorial

The Soweto uprising , as a student uprising in Soweto called, English Soweto Uprising, began on June 16, 1976 in Soweto in South Africa . It claimed numerous lives and led to long protests across the country against the racist education policy and the entire apartheid regime in the country.

history

prehistory

In 1976, Soweto was a southwestern suburb of the South African city of Johannesburg , which consisted of at least 28 townships for blacks. The uprising was triggered by the Afrikaans Medium Decree from 1974, according to which Afrikaans , the language of the white Boer ruling class, was to be introduced as the mandatory language of instruction. The black pupils, some of whom barely mastered this language, saw themselves deprived of their opportunities in the educational system.

Resistance to "Bantu Education"

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 established low quality education for the black population in South Africa. According to the recommendations of the Eiselen Commission (Eiselen Commission) of 1951, the respective African mother tongue for the black population should be extended to the entire primary school period (up to 8th grade) and the two official languages ​​of South Africa at the time, English and Afrikaans, should only be used in the 2nd grade. In the 4th grade or in the 4th grade as foreign languages. However, the responsible supreme authority feared a reset of Afrikaans - the language of the Boers - and decided that from the 1st grade onwards three languages ​​are to be taught.

The intended preference for the respective mother tongue (and the associated exclusion due to the restricted access to the official languages ​​of the country) remained, however. This goal was achieved for the first time in 1959, when the final exams of the 8th grade primary school were not written in English but in the respective African mother tongue.

In what was then the Transvaal , the Department of Native Affairs, on the other hand, stipulated that most subjects in secondary education should be taught in the two official national languages ​​English (natural sciences, practical subjects) and Afrikaans (mathematics, social studies subjects). The teachers only had to hold music, religion and sport in the regional mother tongues. According to the recommendations of the Eiselen Commission, only one official language should be used in secondary education. In everyday school life, this regulation meant that after eight years of teaching in the regional mother tongue during primary school, higher education (from secondary school) had to be conducted in the two official languages ​​in a ratio of 1: 1. Language instruction in the official languages ​​was primarily geared towards grammatical studies and translations, making it difficult for students to acquire oral competence. This turned out to be a massive disadvantage for black students.

In contrast to the schools for white children, where the language of instruction was either English or Afrikaans from the start, there was no requirement for dual language teaching. Where it took place, it was abolished after a controversial discussion.

The Bantu Education Act received heavy criticism from within South African society. Parents, teachers' associations, community associations and the South African Council of Churches opposed this law . The regulations on language teaching were at the center of public criticism. The protests and change efforts spanned the 1960s and 1970s. Even organizations that can hardly be classified as oppositional, such as the Advisory Board for Bantu Education and the African Teachers' Association of South Africa, tried to persuade the Bantu authorities in Pretoria to change.

The nationwide protests against the structure of language teaching remained without legislative consequences for a long time, but were acknowledged in numerous cases with special permits. A tightening occurred in 1974 with the change in personnel at the head of the ministry. The new official ignored the appeals and petitions from the grassroots and ran the agency by tough standards. Even attempts to intervene by the politically aligned homeland governments were rigorously rejected.

After 1975, the proportion of the language of instruction based on the mother tongue was reduced and the final examination of the eight-year primary school was brought forward to the 7th grade. In South Africa there was a change between the 6th and 7th grade from the mother tongue (English, Afrikaans) to dual instruction, in the formally independent homelands between the 4th and 5th grade.

A politically extremely explosive mood developed from 1975 when the final exams had to be taken for the first time in the 7th grade and now in English or Afrikaans (no longer in the African mother tongue for the black students). The structural language deficits that had arisen from the previous curricula could not be made up for within one school year.

The South African Students' Movement

At the end of the 1960s, high school students in the Transvaal Province had come together in the African Students' Movement . In 1972 it was renamed the South African Students 'Movement (SASM, roughly: " South African Students' Movement ") to include Coloreds and Indians . The SASM had ties to the Black Consciousness Movement and the underground African National Congress , but remained independent.

In early 1976, many schools across the country were clearly disapproving of the 1: 1 solution. From February 1976 onwards, there were numerous protests. In March, after student protests, police were called to a Soweto high school. The boycott of education that grew out of the protests began in May and spread across the country.

The SASM founded the Soweto Students' Representative Council (SSRC), which was composed of two representatives from all high schools in Soweto. Its president was Tsietsi Mashinini, then 19 . On June 13, 1976, the SSRC decided to march.

procedure

Around 10,000 to 20,000 students formed in the morning under Mashini's leadership on June 16, 1976 for a march through Orlando in Soweto. The South African Police brutally suppressed the demonstration with 48 police officers, including eight whites. Colonel Kleingeld, the commander of the Orlando Police Station, later stated that he had been pelted with stones and therefore fired the first shot. By morning there were two dead and twelve injured. In the course of the morning students and other residents of Soweto attacked numerous whites and their possessions, such as beer halls, because they viewed alcohol as a means of restraining blacks. In the afternoon and again the following day, the police force was increased to up to 1,500 heavily armed men who shot without warning. Numerous children and young people were arrested during raids on schools. By torture , the police tried to find out the leaders of the uprising. The unrest spread to other townships in South Africa and lasted until 1978. There were also strikes by the black population and international protests. According to investigations by the Cillie Commission (see below), 575 people died in the clashes, including 451 as a result of police violence. 3,907 people were injured, 2,389 of them by police officers. According to numerous information, however, the number of victims was higher. 5,980 people were arrested. Around 250,000 people took part in the protests in Soweto alone, which included all four provinces and the homelands.

The first victim of the uprising was the student Hastings Ndlovu. Occasionally, the then 12-year-old Hector Pieterson is incorrectly referred to as the first victim because a photo showing the fatally injured Pieterson became known worldwide. The Hector Pieterson Memorial has stood in Orlando, Soweto since 1992.

consequences

The apartheid government commissioned an investigation into the riots between June 16, 1976 and February 1977. A commission headed by the lawyer Piet Cillie dealt with the subject and recognized the catastrophic living conditions in Soweto and other townships as the underlying basis of such uprisings, which broke out through the pent-up resentment of their residents in the education system. The Cillie Commission submitted its report to the South African Parliament on February 29, 1980 .

June 16 has been a public holiday in South Africa as Youth Day (formerly Soweto Day ) since 1995 .

International reactions

At the initiative of several UN member states, the UN Security Council was asked to give an opinion on South Africa. This responded in 1976 with Resolution 392, in which the government of South Africa was sharply criticized for its disproportionate approach to the unrest in Soweto and called for the lifting of apartheid relations. The Security Council took a stand in solidarity with the victims of the unrest.

literature

  • Baruch Hirson: Year of Fire, Year of Ash. The Soweto Revolt: Roots of a Revolution? Zed Press, London 1979 ISBN 0905762290
  • Heike Niederig: Language - Power - Culture: multilingual education in post-apartheid South Africa. Waxmann, Münster 2000, ISBN 3-89325-841-8 . Excerpts from books.google.de
  • Nicole Ulrich: Only freedom quenches thirst. School strike, uprising and general strikes in South Africa in 1976. In: Holger Marcks, Matthias Seiffert (Ed.): The great strikes - episodes from the class struggle. Unrast-Verlag, Münster 2008, pp. 154–159, ISBN 978-3-89771-473-1 .
  • Sitiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Noor Nieftagodien, Tshepo Moloi: The Soweto Uprising. In: The Road to Democracy in South Africa. Vol. 2. South African Democracy Education Trust, Pretoria 2011, ISBN 978-1-86888-406-3 . Digitized version ( Memento from October 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)

Web links

Wikisource: United Nations Security Council Resolution 392  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Soweto - A Ghetto Against Apartheid. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 8, 2015 ; accessed on December 2, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Guido Pinkau: School uprising in Soweto. In: Guest in South Africa: Foreign cultures! Understand and experience. Retrieved June 16, 2010 .
  3. Jump up ↑ Soweto school uprising. Retrieved June 16, 2010 .
  4. ↑ Description at africanhistory.about.com (English), accessed on July 26, 2015
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g South African History Online: South African Students' Movement , accessed July 26, 2015
  6. ↑ Heike Niederig: Language-Power-Culture , 2000, p. 87.
  7. ↑ Heike Niederig: Language-Power-Culture , 2000, p. 88.
  8. ↑ Heike Niederig: Language-Power-Culture , 2000, p. 89.
  9. ↑ Heike Niederig: Language-Power-Culture , 2000, p. 92.
  10. ↑ Heike Niederig: Language-Power-Culture , 2000, p. 93.
  11. ↑ Brief description of the events at sabctrc.saha.org.za (English), accessed on July 31, 2015
  12. ↑ a b c James Early in: Political Identity and Social Change: The Remaking of the South African Social Order. SUNY, Albany, NY 2012, ISBN 978-0-791487754 , pp. 67-68. Excerpts from books.google.de
  13. ^ A b c South African History Online: June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising Timeline 1976–1986. (English), accessed July 27, 2015
  14. ↑ Pat Tucker: Cillie Commission . at www.disa.ukzn.ac.za (English, PDF file; 718 kB)
  15. ↑ United Nations : Resolution 392 (1976) of 19 June 1976 at www.undocs.org (English), accessed on March 21, 2020