Expect challenge to education system

“IF WE must learn Afrikaans, Vorster must learn Zulu!”

- RUDI BUYS

The slogan was one of the battle cries that rang through Soweto on the morning of June 16, 1976, as thousands of schoolchildren took to the streets to protest against the decision of the apartheid government that all schools teach in Afrikaans — the language then symbolic of their oppression.

Organised by learners from several schools as a peaceful march, by the hour school would start - around 7-8 o'clock, they began gathering in the streets from various areas, all heading to Orlando stadium. As their numbers grew, their liberation songs and battle dance intensified in the dusty streets, with the police in close attendance, increasingly anxious also growing their numbers.

By mid-morning the numbers of protesters had swelled to several thousand, becoming in all likelihood the largest of youth marches then, and quite possibly since. Soon, at Orlando-West, the police intervened and confronted the moving crowds and soon enough, by midmorning, when it would've been breaktime at school, the situation escalated and police fired tear gas into the masses.