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THE NATIONAL YOUTH UPRISING

Strikes in the Schools Presumably, not all students of the earlier generation 'worshipped the school authorities'! The first, recorded stoppages of lessons, (always called strikes in the South African newspapers), and the first riots in African schools occurred in 1920. In February, students at the Kilnerton training centre went on a hunger strike 'for more food'. A few months later theological students at Lovedale rioted and set fire to the buildings 'in protest against bad bread'. The damage was estimated at between £3,000 and £5,000. A large number of students must have been involved, because 198 students were brought to trial and received sentences ranging from three months imprisonment plus a fine of £50, to strokes with a light cane .... more

Cape Schools Join the Revolt The school students in Cape Town reacted to the news they heard of events in Soweto. A teacher at one of the Coloured schools was later to write: 'We haven't done much by way of teaching since the Soweto riots first began. Kids were restless, tense and confused. 'There is no similar record of what the African children thought, but it is known that they were aware of the extra police patrols that were set up in the townships following June 16. After the first shootings in Cape Town, a teacher at one of the schools recounted ... more

Student protests in Alex ©

The NUSAS Issue Throughout the 1960's black students campaigned for the right to affiliate to the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and just as steadfastly, the move was vetoed by the campus authorities. NUSAS was also keen to welcome the colleges into their fold. Not only would this make it the largest student organisation in the country, but it would also bring into the liberal ''old all student opponents of the government's apartheid policy .... more

Down with Afrikaans Countdown to conflict: The main cause of the protests that started in African schools in the Transvaal at the beginning of 1975 was a directive from the Bantu Education Department that Afrikaans had to be used on an equal basis with English as one of the languages of instruction in the department's secondary schools ... more

 

The Student Revolt in the Western Cape By 1975, then, over 2,000 students were enrolled at UWC. In fact, later, in the period 1975-1986, UWC swelled so in numbers it came to be referred to as the University of the Working Class . early 1976 thus played an important role in the partial deconstruction of Coloured identity, at least among the coterie of students who came of age in the late 1960s. Ten weeks after the black intervarsity in Bellville South, Soweto erupted. There was no causal link, of course. But the fermentation that had taken place the past several years prompted the UWC students to seriously consider their position vis-à-vis Soweto. However, the story of the 1976 uprising on the campus of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and in the Western Cape unfurls a sequence of events that proved fiery and influential, and which connected the institution with communities around it. These events nationalised the struggle for liberation by, in unique ways, adding Coloureds to the equation. The Soweto uprising that year caught the majority of UWC students unaware. But, although slow in their response, they too eventually offered their answers to life in apartheid South Africa. From 1972 through 1976, UWC students had rejected apartheid and racial capitalism, had engaged in work among squatter communities and on the Cape Flats. So in June-July 1976 South Africa was abuzz because parts of it were ablaze. In fact, Azania writhed in the passion and pain of a difficult birth. Fires raged over the beloved land. Far to the north of Cape Town kids sang freedom songs, and cursed on makeshift, tattered cardboard posters about Afrikaans – the language created, for the most part, by the Khoisan, Slaves, and Coloureds – which the oppressor tried to hammer into their heads. And blood kicked up dust on the streets of twisted and pained locations. Source Baruch, H. (1979). Year of Fire, Year of Ash: The Soweto Revolt: Roots of A Revolution , London: Zed Press.