On Tuesday, South Africa will be marking the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising, one of the darkest chapters in South Africa’s apartheid history.
The national commemoration of the golden jubilee will be held at the FNB Stadium Open Field in Nasrec, Johannesburg, under the theme “Reset at 50 – The Future Calls”, but in stark contrast to the youth of 1976 who fought a completely different cause, some youth today say it’s disingenuous to characterise young people in one.
Some argue that for the youth of 2026 to make informed voting choices, they need to be politically conscious, while others say the ground has shifted to the language of social media and content creation as a new way of activism.
Families of the 18 June 1976 Alexandra massacre are calling for a review of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). They say the same bullets that killed young people who marched against the Bantu Education system in Soweto also tore through Alexandra Township two days later, killing more than 35 young people who marched against the same cause.
Fifty years later, the families say their dead loved ones have been left off the list of national memory, and off the list of justice.
Victims family member, Lucky Mabona, says their loved ones were killed and they’ve never been mentioned by the President in the State of the Nation Address.
“If there was another word for it, we wouldn’t call it forgotten. Our people died. It has been almost 50 years and the President has never mentioned us in the State of the Nation Address. The Premier of Gauteng has never mentioned us either.”
VIDEO | Remembering the June 16 Soweto uprising
