June Youth Month- How it all started

This year marks 37 years of the 1976 Soweto youth uprising. We celebrate those who defended their right to equal education, and we commemorate those who lost their lives in the struggle to make South Africa a better place for all generations.

 Youth day is commemorated annually on 16 June; to honour all, the young people who lost their lives in the struggle against apartheid and Bantu education. In 1953, the apartheid government enacted the Bantu Education Act, which established a black Education Department in the Department of Native Affairs.

The role of this department was to compile a curriculum that suited the "nature and requirement of the black people. The author of the legislation, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd (then Minister of Native Affairs, later Prime Minister), stated: " Natives (blacks) must be taught from an early age that equality with Europeans (whites) is not for them." Black people were not to receive an education that would lead them to aspire to positions they wouldn't be allowed to hold in society. Instead they were to receive education designed to provide them with skills to serve their own people in the homelands or to work in labouring jobs under whites.

Bantu education did enable more children in Soweto to attend school than the old missionary system of education, but there was a severe lack of facilities. Nationally, public to teacher ratios went up from 46:1 in 1955 to 58: l in 1967. Overcrowded classrooms were used on a rota basis. There was also a lack of teachers, and many of those who did teach were under qualified. In 1961, only 10 percent of black teachers, held a matriculation certificate.

Because of the government's homelands policy, no new high schools were built in Soweto between 1962 and 1971. Students were meant to move to their relevant homeland to attend the newly built schools there. Then in 1972 the government gave in to pressure from business to improve the Bantu education system to meet business's need for a better trained black workforce, forty new schools were built in Soweto. Between 1972 and 1976 the number of pupils at secondary schools increased from 12 656 to 34 656. One in five Soweto children were attending secondary school.

This increase in secondary school attendance had a significant effect on youth culture. Secondary school students began forming their own, much more politicised identity than before. In 1975 South Africa entered a period of economic depression. Schools were starved of funds: the government spent R644 a year on a white child's education but only R42 on a black child.

The Department of Bantu Education then announced it was removing the Standard 6 year from primary schools. In 1976, 257 505 pupils enrolled in Form 1, but there was space for only 38 000. Many students therefore remained at primary school. Chaos ensued.

Therefore, when the Department of Education issued its decree that Afrikaans was to become a language of instruction at school, it was into an already volatile situation. Students objected to being taught in the language of the oppressor. Many teachers themselves could not speak Afrikaans, but were now required to teach their subjects in it. On June 16, 1976, pupils protested, and police reacted with teargas and gunshots.

 An estimated 20,000 students took part in the protest. One of the first students to be shot dead was 13-year-old Hector Pieterson; the number of people who died is usually given as 176, with estimates of up to 700.