However this angered the insurgents young people and brought them up against heavily armed police. In 1976 there were 257 505 pupils enrolled in Form 1 at high schools which had a capacity for only 38 000 students. Teachers also raised objections to the government announcement. To add to this, 300 predominantly white Wits students marched through the city centre to protest the killing of schoolchildren. Quiz The Uprising After the Uprising 92 people died between August and September in Cape Town By the end of 1976, most of the bloodshed had stopped, but even then the death toll stood over 600 people. So many people were experiencing economic pressure at the time of June 1976. While white schooling was free, compulsory and expanding, black education was sorely neglected. It was overwhelmingly, WRAB structures and cars that were razed. The apartheid press certainly tried to portray it that way. The provisions of the Bantu Education Act and some policy statements made by the Bantu Education Department were directly responsible for the uprisings. Here's how events unfolded: June 16 1976 Uprising - a timeline The unrest following the 1976 Soweto riots continued for my entire tour of duty, on and off, and led to sharp crackdowns and further restrictions of civil liberty, the arrests of lots of leaders, and the banning of lots of organizations. Outside butchery in Moroka there were some fatalities. These developments were followed by the infiltration of trained fighters back into South Africa, bombings of white installations and the subsequent arrest and trials of anti-apartheid activists. The Western Cape is often overlooked when one thinks of the South African student uprising of June 16, 1976, as the locus of the movement was widely documented to be Soweto. Shortly before this incident a railway line near Dikgale, in the Pietersburg district, was damaged in a successful sabotage attempt. The following day I pick up stones. June 16, 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising (also called the Soweto Rebellion) in South Africa. In the 1980s very little education at all took place in the Bantu Education system, which was the target of almost continuous protest. Pour disperser la foule, la police tire à balles réelles, causant au … 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. The first students to gather together were at Naledi High. There were problems of apartheid. In Thembisa, students organised a solidarity march, which, although heavily guarded did not result in violence. The Rand had lost value overnight. Many regard it as the beginning of the end of apartheid. Black journalists standing by the police heard a shot: "Look at him. The events were rooted in apartheid policies that resulted in the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953. Police reports stated that the situation was explosive and they retreated to await further reinforcements. So when we went home we could see that now cars were burning, especially the company cars, those from town, those owned by whites". Nzima is known for capturing the iconic picture of Hector Peterson on 16 June 1976 during the youth uprising in Soweto. The South African government basically declared war on black school children. Towards the middle of 1977 twelve accused activists, who included Mosima Gabriel “Tokyo” Sexwale, were charged under the Terrorism Act in the famous trial of the “Pretoria 12”. The ANC in exile called for immediate international action and the intensification of economic sanctions. The June 16 1976 Uprising that began in Soweto and spread countrywide profoundly changed the socio-political landscape in South Africa. SASM penetrated these formations between 1974 and 1976. Er forderte zahlreiche Todesopfer und führte zu lange andauernden, landesweiten Protestaktionen gegen die rassistische Bildungspolitik und das gesamte Apartheidsregime des Landes. On Youth Day, South Africans pay tribute to the lives of these students and recognises the role of the youth in the liberation of South Africa from the apartheid regime. As students were stopped by the police in one area they moved their protest action to others. Explanation On 16 June 1976, police opened fire on approximately 10 000 school students in Soweto during a protest against the compulsory use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools. "The article addressed the critique that the apartheid government in South Africa used educational policies to keep the races divided, writing, "The question, however, runs deeper than language. In 1953, prior to the apartheid government's Bantu Education Act, 90% of black South African schools were state-aided mission schools. She was previously employed by Standard... Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. All the WRAB owned cars that had escaped being burned were taken out of Soweto after Mulder's visit. These factors can certainly be traced back to the Bantu Education Act introduced by the Apartheid government in 1953. Change style powered by CSL. The Soweto uprising 1976. After everything was all over and time passed, June 16th is now an official holiday in South Africa. That was followed by a cycle of protest and repression that reverberated across the country. 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