Year of Fire Year of Ash: The Soweto Schoolchildren’s Revolt that Shook Apartheid 9781783608966, 9781350251243, 9781783608980

Table of contents :
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Tables and Maps
Foreword
Abbreviations
Nineteen Seventy-Six
Introduction
Race Riots or Class War?
The 19608: from Quiescence to Resistance
Students in Revolt
The Uprising of June 1976
References
Part 1: From School Strikes to Black Consciousness
1. The Black Schools: 1799-1954
Schools: Segregated and Unequal
First Steps in the Cape
Education in the Interior
Early African Criticisms
Discrimination After 1910
The Students' Response
Strikes in the Schools
The University College of Fort Hare
Politics Comes to the Campus
References
2. Bantu Education: 1954-1976
Christian National Education: The Afrikaner Ideal
Bantu Authorities and Bantu Education
ANC Responds: the 'Resist Apartheid Campaign'
Higher Education Under Attack
The Extension of University Education Act
Schools Dismantled and the Struggle Continues
References
3. The University Student Movements: 1960-1969
Bantu Education Implemented
The Black Campus Protest
The NUSAS Issue
'Black Man, You Are On Your Own.'
References
4. Black Consciousness Politics: 1970-1974
SASO and the Black Consciousness Movement
Black Peoples Convention (BPC) Launched, July 1972
Black Consciousness in Action
The May Revolt, 1972
The 'Viva Frelimo' Rally
References
5. Secondary Schools and the African School Movement
Education for Black Labour?
New Labour Needs and School Expansion
Secondary School 'Explosion'
The Language Bombshell
School Students Organise
The South African Students Movement
References
6. The Black Consciousness Movement: Ideology and Action
One Million Members? An Impossible Goal
The Myth of BPC Radicalism
Non-collaboration? The BPC Dilemma
Buthelezi's Politics Pose a Problem
References
Part 2: Workers and Students on the Road to Revolt
7. Black Workers Set the Pace
The Economic Paradox
Workers' Organisations: Old and New
Black Consciousness and the Workers
The Strike in Namibia, 1971
Natal Workers on Strike, 1973
The Intervention of Barney Dladla
The Organisation of Trade Unions
References
8. The Strike Wave Spreads
Black Miners Shake the Country
Strikes Become Endemic
East London: Bantustan Leaders as Strike-Breakers
Strikes Without End
The Strikes and the Political Struggle
References
9. State Repression and Political Revival: 1974-1976
The Schlebusch Commission Reports
Detentions and Arrests
Impact of the Trials: 1976-76
The Bus Boycotts in 1975-76
'The Revolt Is Already Under Way'
South Africa Invades Angola
Buthelezi's Road to Liberation
References
10. The Soweto Revolt: June 1976
Chaos in the African Schools
The Campaign to Stop Afrikaans Medium Lessons
The Demonstration of June 16, 1976
The Youth Take Revenge
Police Terror
The Response of a People
Revolt in the Northern Transvaal
Leaders of the Revolt
The Parents Play Their Part
The Underground Organisations
References
11. The Revolt Takes Shape
The Funeral Ceremonies
Back to School?
The March on Johannesburg
Nation-wide Response
References
12. The Cape Province Explodes
The Shaping of Cape Society
The 'Eiselen' Line
The Schools in Cape Town
'Coloureds are Black, too'
Coloureds and Apartheid Politics
The Theron Commission
Cape Schools Join the Revolt
Separate, Yet Together
Blacks Invade the White City
Was There a Cape Town Leadership?
Other Centres of the Revolt
References
13. New Tactics in the Revolt
Reaction Takes the Offensive
Azikhwelwa Madoda! (Stay at Home!)
To Return or Not to Return to School
Legality and Illegality in Soweto
The September Stay-at-Homes
The Workers Stay at Home
Problems of the Political Strike
References
14. The Revolt Winds Down
The March on Johannesburg
Alcohol and the Christmas Season
Divided Counsel on Examinations
The SSRC Abolishes the UBC
The First Commemoration of June 16
SASM Politics in 1977
The Police Move In
References
Part 3: Black Consciousness and the Struggle in S. Africa
15. Anatomy of the Revolt
Origins
Consciousness and the Revolt
Black Consciousness as an Ideology
Black Consciousness and the Rejection of Class Analysis
The Black Consciousness Movement and Black Business
The Petty Bourgeoisie: Urban and Rural
References
16. Black Consciousness in South African History
The Roots of Black Consciousness
The Message of the CYL Leadership
Economics and the Poverty of CYL Policy
The ANC and the Programme of Action
From Africanism to Black Consciousness
Black Consciousness and Violence
References
A South African Glossary
When Did It Happen? A Chronology of Events
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index

Citation preview

YEAR OF FIRE YEAR OF ASH

About the Author Baruch Hirson (1921-1999) was a lifelong activist who spent nine-and-ahalf years in South African prisons as a result of his opposition to the apartheid regime. Following his release in 1973 he left for England, where he lectured in history at several mllversities and produced eight finely written, passionately argued books on the history of the left in South Africa. These include Yoursfor the Union (1989), The Cope Town Intellectuols (2000) and his autobiography, Revolutions in My Life (1995). He also fOllllded the controversial critical journal Searchlight South Africa. Year of Fire, Year ofAsh, originally banned in South Africa, remains the most widely read of all his books.

THE SOWETO SCHOOLCHILDREN'S REVOLT THAT SHOOK APARTHEID

BARUCH HIRSON Foreword by Shula Marks

ZED

Zed Books LOND ON

This edition of Year of Fire, Year ofAsh: The Soweto Schoolchildren s Revolt that Shook Apartheid was first published in 2016 by Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SEll SRR, UK. www.zedbooks.co.uk Copyright © Yael Shennan, 1979 Foreword © Shula Marks, 2016 The right of Baruch Hirson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. Cover design: www.stevenrnarsden.com Cover photo © Popperfoto/Getty All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprcxluced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-1-78360-896-6 pb 978-1-78360-898-0 pdf 978-1-78360-899-7 mobi 978-1-78360-897-3 epub

This book was originally dedicated to all political prisoners held in South Africa, and in particular to those held at Pretoria Local Prison

Contents

Tables and Maps Foreword byShulaMarks Abbreviations Nineteen Seventy-Six by Dupa Thando Mthimkulu Introduction

PART 1 From School Strikes to Black Consciousness 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The Black Schools: 1799-1954 Bantu Education: 1954-1976 The University Student Movements: 1960-1969 Black Consciousness Politics: 1970-1974 Secondary Schools and the African School Movement The Black Consciousness Movement Ideology and Action

PART 2 Workers and Students on the Road to Revolt 7. Black Workers Set the Pace

8. The Strike Wave Spreads 9. State Repression and Political Revival: 1974-1976 10. The SowetoRevolt: June 1976 11. The Revolt Takes Shape 12. The Cape Province Explodes 13. New Tactics in the Revolt

14. The Revolt Winds Down

PART 3 Black Consciousness and the Struggle in S. Africa

ix

xi xiii

1 3 12 40 60 76 93 107 122 146 159 174 206 214 243 263

15. Amtomy of the Revolt 16. Black Consciousness in South African History

282 308

A SauthAfrican Glassary When Did It Happen? A Chranalagy afEvents Bibliagraphy Acknawledgements Index

331 334 338 345 347

Tables and Maps

Tables 1a African Schooling: Estimated Emolment and State Expenditure, 1855-1945 1b African Schooling: Details of Emolrnent and Expenditure during the Depression, 1930-1939 2a The Number of Primary and Secondary Schools in the Four Provinces, 1946 2b Percentage of African Pupils Emolled in Substandard and in Primary School Classes, 1924-1945 3 African Pupils in School 1955-1969 4 Students at Black Universities 5 Emolment of African Pupils 6 Emolment in Form I at African Schools 7 Strikes by Africans in 1974 8 African Wage Levels in the Principal Industrial Areas, 1974 9 Persons Killed and Injured by Police in the 'normal course of duty', 1971-1976 10 The African Population Statistics of Cape Town, December 1973

24 25 26 26 63 63 98 98 151 152 185 218

Maps I 2 3 4

Southern Africa

Joh31llles bmg and Environs ~_~

The Cape Peninsula

xv 1 76 179 215

Foreword ShulaMarks

I first met Baruch Hirson in Russell Square on a bitterly cold January morning in 1974, shortly after his arrival in the UK on a one-way ticket from South Africa, where he had spent the previous nine years in gaol for his antiapartheid activities. Seeing us both, an outsider would have found it difficult to say which one of us had just come out of a South African jail! Within minutes we were immersed in a lively conversation on South African history - the first of many subsequent discussions - and the possibility of his doing a PhD at SOAS, University of London, where I was teaching. Prevented from maintaining his chosen career as a physics lecturer, Baruch had used his years in prison to acquire, as he puts it in his autobiography, 'a library of books' in his head. By registering for a degree at the distance- learning University of South Africa (UNISA) and then, by dint of following the maze of footnotes and ordering the books on history and politics which looked potentially interesting and relevant, he made his way through some eight hundred books. The UNISA examiners had no choice but to award him a first class degree. Now he wished to find his feet as an historian, by writing a doctoral thesis on South African history. I remember with chagrin my caution at the time: even then, it was not easy for yollllg historians with doctorates to find university positions - and Baruch was already in his early fifties. I suggested that he would be far better off writing his autobiography, or publishing a couple of books as a way into academic life. In the end Baruch did complete a PhD - but he achieved far, far more. Over the next thirty years he published no fewer than nine books and dozens of research papers, starting with this remarkable volume, Year of Fire, Year ofAsh. And, despite his initial reservations about the role of individuals in history, he even came to write his autobiography, Revolutions in My Life (1995), as well as several empathic biographies of men and women whose lives illuminated, in Tom Lodge's words, 'the political effects of human agency'. * Year of Fire, Year ofAsh was written in the wake of the dramatic uprising of black schoolchildren in 1976, which erupted but two years after the Hirson

*

'Introduction' in Yael Hirson (ed.), History of the Left in South Africo. Writings of Boruch Hirson (I.B. Tauris, 2005), p. xiv. Xl

Year of Fire, Year of Ash

family came to London. It was a formidable achievement. It is not only the first detailed account of the schoolchildren's revolt, sparked off by the apartheid government's attempt to impose Afrikaans in their schools, it is also one that has stood the test of time. The amount of detail is extraordinary, given that Hirson observed the upheaval from exile and had little or no direct access to the participants. Re-reading the penultimate chapter of Year of Fire. Year ofAsh in the context of present-day South Africa with its economy in crisis, its universities in turmoil, and school education failing to deliver, Hirson's trenchant analysis of the nature of black consciousness and the relationship of black university students to black workers is both prescient and depressing. This is a text for our times. Shula Marks London April 2016

Xli

Abbreviations

AAC AAC ABCFM ACROM

ADP

AEM AFRO AICA Anti-CAD ANC ASSECA ATASA BAWU BCP BIC BOSS BPA BPC BWC BWP BYCA BYO CFS CI CIS CNE CPRC CRC CYL

FRELIMO IDAMASA lIE JASCO LAY

All African Convention Anglo-American Corporation American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Anti-eRe Committee African Democratic Party African Education Movement Anti-CRC Front African Independent Churches Association Anti-Coloured Affairs Department African National Congress· Association for the Educational and Cultural Advancement of the African People African Teachers Association of South Africa Black Allied Workers Union Black Commmrity Programmes Bantu Investment Corporation Bureau of State Security Black Parents Association Black Peoples Convention Black Workers COlmcil Black Workers Project Black Youth Cultural Association Border Youth Organization Committee for Fairness in Sport Christian Institute Counter Information Service Christian National Education Coloured Persons Representative COlmcil See CPRC Congress Youth League Front for the Liberation of Mozambique Inter-Denominational African Ministers Association Institute for Industrial Education Junior African Students Congress League of African Youth X111

LEARN MPLA NAYO NEUM NUSAS NYO OFS PAC PUTCO SABRA SACP SACI'U SAD SAFO SAlC SAlC SANA SAPPI SASM SASO SOYA SPROCAS SRC SRRSA SSRC SWANLA SWAPO TEACH TLSA TRYO TUCSA UBC UBI UCT UTP UWC WCYO YARM ZETA

XIV

Let Every African Learn Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola National Youth Organisation Non-European Unity Movement National Union of South African Students Natal Youth Organisation Orange Free State Pan-Africanist Congress Public Utility Transport Corporation South African Bureau of Racial Affairs South African Commmrist Party South African Congress of Trade Unions Society for African Development South African Freedom Organisation South African Indian Congress South African Indian Council South African News Agency South African Pulp and Paper Industries South African Students Movement South African Students Organisation Society of Yotmg Africa Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society Students Representative Council Smvey of Race Relations in South Africa Soweto Students Representative Council South West African Native Labour Association South West African Peoples Organisation Teach Every African Child Teachers League of South Africa Transvaal Youth Organisation Trade Union Council of South Africa Urban Bantu Council Union of Black Jownalists University of Cape Town Urban Training Project University of the Western Cape Western Cape Youth Organisation Young African Religious Movement Zulu Education and Teaching Assistance

~

ATLANTIC OCEAN.

BOTSWANA

SOUTHERN AFIUg,.

CAPE . .OYINCE

REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFlue" (AZANA)

~ndhoft

~

SCAlE I: 11000000 Kilometres. o " !09 30q

,.,..... Rivers

..... -... Provinci81 boun6riC!S

-.-- lntern.,I'" baundries

KEY

INDIAN OCEAN.

Nineteen Seventy-Six Go nineteen seventy-six We need you no more Never come again We ache inside. Good friends we have Lost. Nineteen seventy-six You stand accused of deaths Imprisonments Exiles And detentions. You lost the battle You were not revolutionary Enough We do not boast about you Year of fire, year of ash.

Oupa Thando Mthimkulu Reprinted with permission from Sta!!rider, Vol. 1, No.1, 1978.

Introduction

As I have told the South African public time and time again, race relations in this country have deteriorated to the extent that there will no longer be any possible reconciliotion between black and white. What is happening is, in fact, a projection of black anger againlt the racist regime. This anger is directed at anything that is connected with the system and the government. It is not a question of the insistence on the Afriktuzns language as the mode of instruction for black schoolchildren. The burning of the offices belonging to the government administration - the beerhalls, administration offices, post offices, administration-run buses and the like - should be enough for the people to realise this point. It has got nothing to do with vandalism ... it is black anger against white domination. Winnie Mandela interviewed by Eric Abraham, after 16th June 1976.

Black anger against white domination has never been far below the surface in South Africa. In the countryside, on the farms, and in the towns, Africans have voiced their protests, organised campaigns, and used every means available to them in order to secure some concessions from the white ruling class. At every turn they were met by an intransigent minority which meant to maintain its control - by political hegemony, by economic subordination, by social segregation, by rules and regulations, and ultimately by brute force. The anger has often been muted. The forms of protest have been 'peaceful'. The black population has shown a measure of self-control which belied the deep hatred of endless humiliation felt by every man, woman and child. In all the strikes, the boycotts, the demonstrations, and local and national campaigns, leaders urged restraint - and the police answered with baton charges, or with armoured cars, teargas and bullets. The violence, all too often, turned inwards, and in the black townships that bordered the all-white towns, groups of tsotsis (as the delinquents were called)! terrorised the population. The seething anger, fostered by poverty and frustration, exacted its toll of injured, mutilated and murdered from the oppressed black population itself. Soweto, a town that is not to be found on most maps, has been the focus of much violence for several decades now. Its population of 1.3 million serves the half million whites (who constitute the 'official' population of Johannesburg) as labourers in their homes, shops and factories. By all accounts this town that is not a town, this area known to the world by the

3

Year of Fire, Year of Ash

acronym Soweto (South West Township) is one of the most violent regions on earth. One year before Soweto erupted in revolt the newspaper of the students of the University of the Witwatersrand reported that: ... In the last year there was a 100 per cent increase in crimes of violence: 854 murders; 92 culpable homicides; 1,828 rapes; 7,682 assaults with intent to do grievous bodily harm. Four hundred thousand people in Soweto do not have homes. The streets and the eaves of the churches are their shelter. The faces and bodies of many Soweto people are scarred; the gun is quick and the knife is silent. 2 The same black fury has been turned against whites. Not only in acts of 'crime' - the houses of white Johannesburg are renowned for their rosebushes and for their burglar-proofing! - but through acts of violence directed against any individual seen to be harming members of the township population. There is a long history of rioting following motor, train or bus accidents in which Africans have been injured or killed. The fury of the crowd that collected was directed against persons who were present, or passing the scene. Voluble fury changed to stone throwing and the destruction of property. The crowd would metamorphose into a seething furious mass that sought revenge. This violence was endemic in a country where local communities lived under intolerable conditions. There was always a deep sense of frustration and alienation inside the townships or segregated areas of the big urban conurbations. The riots served to bring a section of the community together; to fuse disparate individuals into a collectivity which rose up against longstanding wrongs. When the riot was protracted - as it was in 1976 - the crowd was not static. Factions emerged and formulated new objectives. There was not one crowd, but an ever changing mass of people who formed and reformed themselves as they sought a way to change social conditions. To describe the participants and their groups as being 'ethnic' or 'tribal' or 'racial', as many white South Africans do, does not help to explain the aspirations of such people or the causes of events. It only hides the glaring inequalities in the society and conceals the poverty of the rioters. Such descriptions, furthermore, distract attention from the provocateurs who egged the 'rioters' on, and from the prolonged campaigns of hatred in the local or national (white) press which often preceded African attacks on minority communities. An openly anti-Indian campaign in the press preceded the Durban riots of 1949. Direct police intervention and police direction accompanied the 'tribal' assaults during the Evaton bus boycott in 1956. Open police incitement led to attacks on Soweto residents by Zulu hostel dwellers in 1976. When apologists for the system found that descriptions of the rioters in terms of 'race' or 'ethnicity' were not convincing, they tried another ruse.

4

Introduction They claimed that the events were due to 'criminal elements' and to township tsotsis. They ignored what has long been a marked feature of periods of high political activity in the townships of South Africa, namely a corresponding sharp drop in criminal activity. This decline in criminality was also a marked feature of the events of 1976 when the initial riots were transformed into a prolonged revolt against the white administration. 3 It was necessary for the police and the regime to mask the new antagonisms that emerged in the townships. When the youth turned against members of the township advisory council (the Urban Bantu Council or UBC), or against African businessmen and some of the priests, the authorities blamed the tsotsis; when the youth destroyed the beerhalls and bottle stores, again it was the tsotsis who were to blame; and when plain clothes police shot at children, tsotsis were blamed again. Yet never once did any of these tsotsis shoot at the police, or indeed at any white. Not one of the slanderers, who glibly accused blacks of shooting their fellows in the townships, find it necessary to comment on this anomaly.

Race Riots or Class War? The revolt, presented to the world by the media as a colour clash, was, in fact, far more than a 'race war'. The words used in the past had changed their meanings by 1976. The word 'black' was itself diluted and extended. During the 1970's the young men and women who formed the Black Consciousness Movement recruited not only Africans, but also Coloured and Indian 4 students and intellectuals. During the 1976 Revolt the Coloured students of Cape Town, both from the (Coloured) University of the Western Cape and from the secondary schools joined their African peers in demonstrations, and faced police terror together with them. In the African townships there were also indications that the Revolt transcended colour considerations. In Soweto there were black policemen who were as trigger-happy as their white counterparts; there were also government collaborators in the black townships who threatened the lives of leading members of the Black Parents Association; there were black informers who worked with the police; there were Chiefs who aimed to divert the struggle and stop the school boycott; and there was an alliance between members of the Urban Bantu Council, the police, and tribal leaders which was directed at suppressing the Revolt; and, ultimately, there was the use of migrant labourers against the youth. Armed, directed, and instructed by the police, these men were turned loose on the youth of Soweto, and in Cape Town, shebeen (pothouse) owners used migrant labourers to protect their premises. The result was widespread maiming, murder, and destruction of property. Despite this evidence of co-operation by part of the African petty bourgeoisie and others with the government, there was one indubitable fact. The Revolt did express itself in terms of 'black anger' which did in fact express a basic truth about South African relationships. Capital and finance 5

Year of Fire, Year of Ash are almost exclusively under white control. Industry and commerce are almost entirely owned and managed by Whites. Parliament and all government institutions are reserved for Whites, and all the major bodies of the state are either exclusively manned by, or controlled by, white personnel. Thf conjunction of economic and political control and white domination does divide the population across the colour-line. Those Blacks who sought alliance with the Whites naturally moved away from their black compatriots and allied themselves to the ruling group. Certain others were cajoled or threatened, bribed, driven - or just duped - into buttressing the state structures and using their brawn-power to break black opposition. Because most white workers, irrespective of their role in production, sided so overwhelmingly with the white ruling class, class divisions were concealed, and racial separation and division appeared as the predominant social problem. The economic crisis of 1975, in part a result of the depression in the West and the fall in the price of gold, and in part a manifestation of the crisis in South African capitalism, only cemented the alliance of white workers and the ruling class. The black communities found few friends amongst the Whites in the aftermath of the clash of June 16, 1976. Those Whites who demonstrated sympathy with the youth of Soweto were confined to a handful of intellectuals who came mainly from the middle class; or from a group of committed Christians who had established some ties with the groups that constituted the Black Consciousness Movement. Capitalist production in South Africa owes its success to the availability of a regimented cheap labour force. In the vast rural slums, known as Reserves, the women and children, the aged, the sick and the disabled eke out a bare existence. All rely on the remittances of their menfolk in the towns. The accommodation in townships, in hostels, or in compounds (barracks) is like· wise organised in order to depress African wage levels. At the same time, the vast urban slums, of which Soweto is by far the largest, were planned in order to ensure complete police and military control, were the administrative system ever to be challenged. The government also sought to control more effectively the vast conurbations that grew up on the borders of the 'white' towns by dividing the townships, the hostels, the compounds and all the subsidiary institutions (like schools and colleges) into segmented 'tribal' regions. It also divided Africans from Coloureds, and both of these from Indians, by setting up residential 'Group Areas' (each being reserved for one 'race'). The map of South Africa was drawn and redrawn in order to seal off these communities, and ensure their separation from one another. For much of the time the government has, in fact, been able to use its vast administrative machinery (reinforced by massive police surveillance) to keep opposition under control. Time and again small groups, organised by the movements in exile, were uncovered and smashed. Political organisations in the townships were not allowed to develop, following the shootings in Sharpeville and Langa in 1960, and the banning of the two national liberation movements (the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress).

6

Introduction

It was only with great difficulty that political groups emerged at a later date, and it is some of these which will be discussed in this book.

The 19608: from Quiescence to Resistance BlaCk~ger seemed subdued through the sixties. Draconian legislation, constan police surveillance and the many political trials of the 1960's cowed the peop . Some fOhnd solace in drink, and it was the feeling that so many adults had surrendered the struggle for liberation and turned to the bottle that led to the onslaught on bottle stores and beerhalls in 1976. Not all sought to escape. Although there were no effective open political organisations for them to join, and no industrial organisations to provide a lead, some workers were still determined to take action in order to secure higher wages. These working men and women participated in the widespread (largely illegal) strikes of the early seventies. This strike wave was the main indication of an end to nearly a decade of political inertia. No account of the Soweto Revolt can ignore the working class struggles of neighbouring Namibia or of Natal and the Witwatersrand. These too expressed 'black anger', but very different from the black anger which finally erupted in Soweto. It was the anger of a working class determined to secure better living conditions, and the workers needed no philosophy of 'blackness' to instruct them. They knew the price of discrimination, and they sought redress from those who could pay - the mine owners, the industrialists, and the businessmen. On to this scene of industrial stirring came the Black Consciousness Movement. Its leaders spoke of black awareness and of black identity, and this was a language which appealed particularly to students and intellectuals. There it might have rested - or in fact even been stilled - had it not been for two crucial factors. Firstly, the organisations were allowed to exist, and even encouraged, by members of the administration who were blinded by their own rhetoric into believing that this movement fitted into the framework of apartheid policy. The Black Peoples Convention (BPC), an umbrella organisation that embraced unions of journalists, students, artists, and a federation of black women, was more usually known as the Black Consciousness Movement, and given semi-official sanction. Secondly, the main constituent of the BPC was the South African Students Organisation (SASO), which was allowed to organise (or was tolerated initially) on the black campuses.

Students in Revolt SASO was the latest of a series of organisations that set out to organise black university students. As such it was the inheritor of a long tradition of student 7

Year of Fire, Year of Ash struggles that started first in the boarding schools of the Eastern Cape, continued in boarding schools and colleges of education in the Cape Province and Natal, and eventually embraced the University colleges and every school in the country. These struggles in the schools and colleges were not integrated into the activities of the national liberation movement before 1948. Their strikes were neither organised nor encouraged, and received scant attention. Although it is possible to trace the link between earlier struggles and the students' revolt in the 1970's, the continuity was barely recognised by the new leaders in SASO and in the townships. It is not even possible to find traces of any formal black students' organisation in the schools before the late sixties. Nonetheless, conflict situations developed year after year and erupted in periodic boycotts, strikes and arson. When, eventually, an independent black university organisation was formed in the late sixties, it immediately provided political direction and stepped into the vacuum left by the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1960. The new student body, SASO, provided the leading cadres for the BPC, and helped create the atmosphere which led to the 1976 confrontation in Soweto.

The Uprising of June 1976 Conflicts on the campuses in the seventies coincided with a contraction of the country's economy and with momentous events on the northern borders of the country. The fighting in Namibia, the collapse of the Portuguese army in Mozambique, the move to independence in Angola and the resumption of guerrilla warfare in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) all influenced the youth of South Africa (or Azania, as they renamed the country). The BPC generally, and SASO groups in the universities, used more militant language. They now talked of liberation, and of independence; they defied a government ban on meetings, and when arrested were defiant in court. When the government finally took steps to change the language of instruction of higher primary and secondary school students in 1975, the stage was set for a massive confrontation. The factors sketched above were by no means independent of each other. The strains in the South African economy, the wave of strikes, the new military situation, the resurgence of African political consciousness and the rapidly altering position in the black schools, were all interconnected. The only non-tribal political organisation that was able to operate openly inside South Africa was the Black Peoples Convention. Yet from its inception in 1972 the difficulties it faced were insuperable. The South African state was powerful, its army undefeated and unshakably loyal to the regime. The police force was well trained and supported by a large body of informers in the townships - and it had infiltrated the new organisations. Above all, the regime had the support of the Western powers and even seemed to be essential to America and Great Britain in securing a 'peaceful' solution to the Zimbabwean conflict.

8

Introduction The young leaders of SASO and of the BPC were inexperienced. Their social base was confined (at least as of 1975) to the small groups of intellectuals in the universities, some clerics, journalists, artists, and the liberal professions. Furthermore, their philosophy of black consciousness turned them away from an analysis of the nature of the South African state. They seemed to respond with the heart rather than with the mind. They were able to reflect the black anger of the townships - but were unable to offer a viable political strategy. At times, in the months and even weeks before June 16, the students in SASO seemed to be expecting a confrontation with the forces of the government. They spoke courageously of the coming struggle - but made no provision for the conflict. Even when their leaders were banned or arrested there did not seem to be an awareness of the tasks that faced them and when, finally, the police turned their guns on the pupils of Soweto schools and shot to kill, there were no plans, no ideas on what should be done. Black anger was all that was left; and in the absence of organisation, ideology or strategy, it was black anger which answered the machine guns with bricks and stones. The people of Soweto had to learn with a minimum of guidance, and they responded with a heroism that has made Soweto an international symbol of resistance to tyranny. Young leaders appeared month after month to voice the aspirations of the school students - and if they were not able to formulate a full programme for their people, the fault was not theirs. A programme should have been formulated by the older leaders - and that they had failed to do. In the event, the youth fought on as best they could - and they surpassed all expectations. Despite all the criticisms that can be levelled against the leaders of the school pupils, the revolt they led in 1976-77 has altered the nature of politics in South Africa. Firstly it brought to a precipitate end all attempts by the South African ruling class to establish friendly relations with the leaders of some African states, and it has made some Western powers reconsider the viability of the white National Party leaders as their best allies on the subcontinent. Secondly it marked the end of undisputed white rule, and demonstrated the ability of the black population to challenge the control of the ruling class. In every major urban centre and in villages in the Reserves, the youth marched, demonstrated, closed schools, stopped transport and, on several occasions, brought the entire economy to a halt. The youth showed an ingenuity that their parents had been unable to achieve. They occupied city centres, they closed alcohol outlets, they stopped Christmas festivities. At their command the schools were closed, the examinations were boycotted, and the teachers resigned. They forced the resignation of the Soweto Urban Bantu Council and the Bantu School Boards -both long castigated as puppets of the regime. They were even able to prevent the immediate implementation of a rent rise in 1977 and, in the many incidents that filled those crowded days that followed the first shootings of 16 June 1976, they were able to show South Africa and the world that there was the will and the determination to end the apartheid system.

9

Year of Fire, Year of Ash

References Note: References to the Introduction have by and large not been provided. Evidence for all assertions will be found in the text when the events are described in greater detail. 1. 2. 3.

4.

lO

See Glossary for words that are commonly used in South Africa. This extract, taken from the Wits Student, 16 June 1975, was reprinted in an International University Exchange Fund bulletin after appearing in the South African Outlook. The words used represent different phases in the struggle of an oppressed people. Riots are acts of violence against individuals or a community in order to redress some wrong. Revolts are risings against the local or national authority, usually to redress some wrong or secure some changes in the law. Revolutions occur when riots and revolts (or any other mass action) are aimed at changing the structure of a given society. The transition from riot or revolt to revolution can occur in the midst of a struggle, but such a transition usually involves a marked change in consciousness and the acceptance of an ideology. The South African population in the mid-1970's consisted of approximately 4.3 million Whites, 2.4 million Coloureds, 0.75 million Indians, and over 18 million Africans.

PART!

From School Strikes to Black Consciousness

1. The Black Schools: 1799-1954

Schools: Segregated and Unequal In 1971, every white school child in the Transvaal was given an illustrated volume to 'commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Republic of South Africa'. On the subject of education the authors of the book declared: The cultural and spiritual developmental level of a nation can with a fair amount of certainty be ascertained from the measure of importance the nation concerned attaches to the education of its children ... Only by developing the mental and spiritual resources of the nation to their maximum potential, can the need of the modern state for fully trained leaders, capable executives, industrialists with vision, dedicated teachers, scientists, engineers and skilled personnel be properly supplied. 1 The subject of education was then explored in terms of facilities provided, buildings and equipment used: Not only has the equipment to be suitable with a view to efficient teaching, but the physical well being of the pupils must be taken into consideration. 2 This was a state publication designed to instil patriotic fervour in the breast of every white child. It was the white child's well being that was being discussed, and the white child's future as leader, executive, industrialist or professional that was being described. It was also a self-congratulatory book; and the administration was satisfied with the role it played in providing facilities for the schools. Accompanied by lavish illustrations there were eulogistic descriptions of library facilities, school equipment and sports grounds, and also of teacher training, of psychological and guidance services, and of educational tours. The claims made in this commemorative volume do not stand serious scrutiny. The educational system ( for Whites) had serious defects which had been debated openly for many decades. The standards in many of the schools 12

The Black Schools, 1799-1954 were low, the social sciences were designed to show the superiority of the Whites, and the natural science courses were antiquated in content. With all their blemishes, the white schools were however lavishly equipped, and the cost of educating each pupil was high. If the commemorative volume had set out to describe the conditions of all sections of the population, a very different publication would have been necessary. In the realm of education alone, it would have had to be shown that the conditions of the vast majority of the youth were very different from those of the Whites. The Transvaal Province was responsible for financing and directing the education of all Whites below University level. And being the area of greatest population density, the Province catered for 52 per cent of the white youth of the country: that is, some 400,000. The responsibility for African education, on the other hand, had been placed in the hands of the central Department of Bantu Administration and Education since 1954. Unlike the Whites, for whom education was compul. sory, African youth had great difficulty in obtaining education, and what they were given was grossly inferior. Whereas every white child would complete primary school, and one quarter would complete the secondary school in 1969 (the date at about which the commemorative volume was being written),3 70 per cent of all African children who found a place in the schools would leave after four or less years of attendance. Less than four per cent would enter secondary school, and few of these would complete the five year course. Some comparative statistics indicate the disparities in the schooling of Whites and Africans. In 1969 there were 810,490 white youth at school, and the total cost of their education was R241 ,600,000 (or £120.8 million). In the same year 2,400,000 African children were at school. The cost of their schooling, t