Johannesburg - The so-called “Youth Month” was lukewarmly launched by the government earlier this week in Soweto.
I take umbrage with the reference to June as “Youth Month”, more especially when we link it to June 16, 1976, in Soweto. It was on this day, 46 years ago, that students revolted against the entrenchment of apartheid in our society by marching against the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction alongside English in black schools.
In response, the apartheid regime callously killed hundreds of black people, mostly young people, in Soweto. As this revolution spread to other areas, more black people were killed in the ensuing days and months.
The calendar of the post-1994 South Africa is littered with examples of “neutral” references to many epochal moments and events in our history of resistance against apartheid. This is, of course, in addition to other arrangements that clearly show the extent to which our leaders went to appease the apartheid leaders in the name of “national reconciliation” and “nation building”.
Examples in this regard should include the retention of the apartheid Die Stem in the post-1994 national anthem and other symbols such as Springboks. In fact, the apartheid structures and systems have fundamentally remained intact. I won’t tire to consistently point at the colonial construct of “South Africa” (our failure to rename this country, Azania), the retention of the Union Buildings, parliamentary structures, apartheid spatial planning and so forth.
There is no sign or indication that our calendar is inspired by Afrikan experiences, cultures and history.
I can only imagine the impact that Black Consciousness (BC) would have had on our people had it not been disrupted by anti-black forces? In other words, we would not have had the problem of weak black leaders or non-whites because I really cannot fathom a captured black conscious leader.
BC is founded on the notions of self-love, black pride, self-reliance and the rejection of an inferiority complex. Looking at these values, in juxtaposition to the disappointment and mess of the post-1994 dispensation, it is clear that we would have had servant leaders, no poor service delivery to black communities, no corruption and above all confident leaders who’d not sell their souls and allow themselves to be used as proxies of our enemies.
Our education system would, certainly, have already been decolonised because decolonisation of the mind lies at the core of the black consciousness philosophy. As a matter of fact, the BC philosophy lies in the expression: “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
I imagine a society where black people would have been conscientised to believe in their fellow black brothers and sisters, and thus supporting black projects and businesses.
The “buy black” agenda would have already ensured that black people played a meaningful role in the economy. In addition, the black consciousness leadership would have already ensured that the land was long repossessed from the dispossessor, and generally the wealth and minerals would have been returned to the people in a socialist (egalitarian) society.
The problem with the terminology of “youth day” or “youth month”, effectively extricates the micro issues of the June 16 uprising from the broader socio-political struggles of back people. It makes our people not to pay attention to the reality that the action by the students (and the corresponding action by the apartheid forces) was a result of the white supremacist system of the erstwhile regime.
The issues relating to poor education provision and skewed language policies were meant to entrench an exploitative and racially prejudicial political and socio-economic system in the country.
So, it is important to take a critical and broader reinterpretation of the instruction by the Bantu Education authorities to impose Afrikaans as a medium of instruction alongside English (on a 50-50 basis) to black students.
While on this aspect, I wish to emphatically make it clear that the rejection of Afrikaans does not imply our embracement of the English Language. It remains another colonial language.
These distorted references or misnomers, in my view, are mere attempts at the erasure of the true and painful story and, indeed, a dilution of the barbaric, cruel and callous character of the white supremacist system of apartheid.
It’s quite sad that the feeble reconciliation of the post-1994 arrangement is riddled with an array of euphemistic misrepresentations, and has bred a complacent and lackadaisical attitude, particularly on the part of our leaders, to not really appreciate the huge sacrifices made.
This has become apparent in terms of how far black leaders have been prepared to go in order to assuage the feelings of our oppressors.
Capture by white monopoly capital (WMC) is a ruthless and insensitive affront on the sacrificial contribution that black people have made to the freedom struggle.
The cries by the heroes and martyrs of 1976 for Black Power have, unfortunately, yielded the state of black powerlessness and marginalisation in the new apartheid dispensation disguised as the rainbow nation.
It’s a blatant betrayal of our ancestors, the present and future generations of the natives of this land!
Inferiority complex is a detrimental phenomenon that white people have managed to instil in black people to ensure the sustenance of their dominance and oppressive positionality. This should explain the reality of black leaders in post-independence Afrika and post-1994 South Africa still embedded in colonial and apartheid mental frames, approaches, attitudes and systems.
The sons and daughters of Afrika are therefore in the belly of the beast of neo-colonialism and neo-apartheid even in this, the 21st century! Steve Biko had long identified the problem, and predictively even proffered its resolution in this sense: “The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.”
We need to understand that the June 16, 1976 Revolution was a culmination of many conscious actions and steps by the Black Consciousness Movement, both in the wider political society and schools, through BCM structures such as the Black People's Convention (BCM), South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) and the Action Committee of the South African Students’ Movement (SASM).
It’s therefore not just an “incident” that arose spontaneously. It’s also not simply a matter that can exclusively be attributed or credited to the students (youth?) alone. That’s why its unravelling shows the huge contribution of members of the black community in their different social standings, including Onkgopotse Abram Tiro and even the likes of the PAC’s Zeph Mothopeng.
In fact, Mothopeng was referred to as “co-conspirator number one” by the apartheid regime in terms of the indictment or charges relating to the June 16 Soweto uprisings, held in a court in Bethal as per the Terrorism Act.
We should understand that the 1976 revolution happened when the liberation movement, particularly the PAC and the ANC, were banned in 1960, while the BCM had taken root in the political landscape of the country following the lull that ensued from the banning of the liberation movement.
As they say, “nature does not allow a vacuum”. It is in this respect that the BCM obliterated that vacuum! It is the BCM, through its various structures, that ensured the conscientisation and politicisation of many youths and parents in such dangerous circumstances.
Thus, the so-called freedom in the neo-apartheid state wrapped in the rainbow cloth is, mainly, a result of the contribution of the BCM. Our people, especially young people, need to understand that June 1976 can, logically, only be commemorated as a BCM-inspired political epoch in the history of this country. And correctly so, as June 16 Soweto Uprising!
Any reference to June as “Youth” Month is therefore ahistorical and dangerous in that it has the potential to dupe our people into “celebrating” the tragedy of June 16 Soweto Uprisings. It also borders on inducing or aiding a sense of amnesia as to what happened in 1976.
This distortion, as alluded to earlier, enables the agenda of reconciliation without justice and the tune of “forgive and forget” about what white people did to our people, and have to date never apologised and paid for their evil deeds. What frustrates and depresses more is the fact that it is black people who are the ones specialising in this unreciprocated act of reconciliation: the rainbow project!
So, the discourse of “youth” hides the real character of what the activists of 1976 were really about. Those heroes and martyrs cannot be linked with some of the tendencies generally associated with the “youth” today. I don’t think the BCM and activists of June 1976 can be reconciled with some of the indiscretions by “youth”, such as self-hate and so forth.
By the way, drinking outlets were identified then as contributors to the decay and deterioration of the black community. The discourse of “youth” is an example of the contributing factors to the tinkering of the apartheid system. The terminology of “youth” in the context of June 16, 1976 says nothing true, nothing political and absolutely nothing to suggest resistance to apartheid, which is a crime against humanity. The use of the word “youth” is so neutral, it’s innocent and indeed so “rainbowist”!
When the BPC and other BCM formations were banned in 1977 (following the Soweto uprisings), it was the gallant warriors of BCM that regrouped and, against all odds, formed the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) in February 1978 to ensure no lull and vacuum recurred in our political space.
Why don’t we call this the “Black Consciousness Month”, while June 16 is correctly referred to as the Soweto June 16 Uprising Day, as it was before the rainbow government in 1994?
David Letsoalo is a Sankarist, an activist and Law academic