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June 16, Youth Day, is a significant day in South African history. Previously known as Soweto Day, it signifies the sacrifices made by the students that took part in the Soweto and related student uprisings of 1976. On that day, police responded with teargas and live bullets when high-school students in Soweto started protesting for better education. Today, the day is commemorated by in South Africa as a national holiday. Youth day, as it is known, honors all young people who lost their lives in the struggle against Apartheid and Bantu Education. Names such as Hector Petersen, Tsietsi Mashinini, Murphy Morobe, Seth Mazibuko have become synonymous with sacrifices made by ‘the class of 76’. Over the years it has come to signify a day when the trajectory of youth development must be profiled and more importantly redefine the narrative of events leading up to 1976 such that it has relevance to contemporary South African youth and their varied priorities.

Researcher at the South African Democracy Education Trust, Sifiso Ndovu emphasizes the need to properly locate the narrative such that it reflects the sustained effort which in fact had its core roots in 1975. • On 3 January 1975, the African Teachers’ Association of South Africa (ATASA) submitted a memorandum to the Department of Bantu Education in protest of the 1975 ruling that Afrikaans and English were to be used on a 50:50 basis. The view opposing the ruling also appeared in the newspaper, The World, which enjoyed the widest circulation in Soweto. • The introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at selected schools which further highlighted the Afrikaner nationalist ideology galvanised a fair amount of young people into student political activism. This also marked the emergence of a collective socio-political movement of the time which included joint efforts from teachers, parents, journalists among other groups, all whom played a major contribution to events leading up to June 16 1976. • In 1975 a sharp drop in gold price aggravated South Africa’s economic difficulties and it came about as a result of the oil price increase which came on the back of the Arab-Israel conflict in 1973 -1974 • The economic downturn resulted in African schools being starved funds. For every R644 that the government spent on a white student, R42 was spent on an African student. In a further attempt to save money by the cash-strapped government, the Bantu Education Department decided to reduce the number of school tears from 13 to 12. • On 5 May 1975, M.C. Botha, the Bantu Education Minister said that the government could not conceivably approve English as the medium of instruction, if this ‘should be the wish of some of the homelands’ – a tune he would change following the uprising when he conceded: “The introduction of a ‘foreign language’ as a medium in the primary school was a backward step educationally with which the department would not like to be associated: Concept formation and understanding at this stage take place best through the vernacular.’ These were some of the events that happened in 1975 that culminated in the events of Soweto June 16 and that which followed in moths to come that same year elsewhere in the country.

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