• Tweet

June 16 1976

RELATED ARTICLES

• How June 16 has lost its meaning
• June 16 represents death of madness and rebirth of sanity
• The fault lies with wrongdoing in high places
• State of emergency needed to save the soul of South Africa

Without ascribing insignificance to other brave dates, this is one where black people braved to ask the Creator, Senzeni Na? What have we done, was the question.

That they were rendered minions in the land of their birth was clearly not within a divine plan.

For their redemption, blacks were not going to wait for the second coming of Jesus either. Their hour, to embark on their march to freedom, had come. The responsibility pointed to the Class of 1976 to lead with purposeful urgency.

The imposition of Afrikaans as a medium for educational instruction was not all that there was to the fight.

The lyrics and tune of that tear-jerking song, Mabayeke umhlaba Wethu, shows that the matters about which the students were fired up had gone beyond the language issue.

In that song, you encountered black people who embodied to the brim the richness of soul worth fighting for.

The peacefulness, seriousness and dignity accorded that song, typified a people who knew that in order to fight for their land, they had to love and respect themselves first.

At the heart of it all was the land question, without forgetting the minerals buried in its bosom.

You would be mistaken to think the June 16 movement did not bother about air in our skies nor the waters of our seas.

No wonder those students did not see and think of themselves as "the youth" with a copyright for chaos.

The Class of 1976 saw itself as part and parcel of the community whose struggle it embraced as its own to champion. That struggle was political in character, economic in substance and anti-colonial in nature. The clenched black power salutes that the June 16 movement raised symbolised determined solidarity to overcome.

If faith and religion had anything to do with it, the brave young hearts at the helm took the struggle from the classroom to the streets, touched by the hand of the Almighty to reclaim their humanity in defiance of bullets, deaths in detentions and disappearance into unmarked graves to conceal apartheid-era killing fields.

Beyond June 16, every trick in the book of the oppressor was rendered obsolete.

The fruits of freedom enjoyed today would not have been reachable to gather had those students not shaken the tree.

June 16 1976 was not just an action against a part of a system (of education) but the total regime of black subjugation.

On that day black people bravely looked into the eyes of the beast and did not allow their fate to waste in its dying claws.

Did Steve Biko not tell us that the most important weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed? On that day the oppressed rose to reclaim their mind. The pitiful shadow of their selves that blacks are today again asking: Senzeni Na?

Comments

• Sign in or sign up to comment

Sun May 19 07:50:22 SAST 2013 ::

Jun 19, 2012

Papage

"Blacks owe their freedom today to the class of '76"

What about us whites? who do we owe it to?
Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

mareza

yes because the pupil of from high 2000 what they know is to drink at their teenage stage
Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

tpaz

We dont owe our freedom to anyone, if they didn't do it someone was going to do it.

@Papage.....the pale devils are not free.
Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

golezwa

and blacks owe this land that they want to take from whites without paying for it to Khoi people, this South Africa belongs to Khoi people, not blacks or whites...
Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

DjEp

@Papage, exactly my point.
What about the white s? when is this 1976 youth cr ab going to end. Enough about it, it doesnt make sense to me anymore. they did it it was their turn and we hosted the world cup the future generation owes us nothing for hosting the showpiece.
Each generation has a task to fullfill they had theirs and we had ours so dont keep reminding us about 76 its boring now. what must we do now k ill ourselves becuase we are smarter than they were? we have tec hnology at our fingertips u dont expect us to walk 10 km to invite someone like they did in 76,we have cellphones i can do that in seconds.
Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

golezwa

@Tpaz, true that, they felt they needed to do it then as much as we would feel its our duty to do it had they not achieved their goal, we owe thanks to God that at least they were successful
Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

DjEp

@Mareza,we owe nothing to nobody!
they did it becuase they saw it fit for them, no one forced them. we voted out the apartheid govenment because we saw it fit for us, the future youth owes us fu ckall. when will this 76 irritating story will ever end.

Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

DjEp

If we look back too often we will not see whats coming ahead and thus we may end up not even moving an inch. Enough about 76 there are better things ahead, like Mangaung the removal of Zuma,2013 AFCON in South Africa, etc. our govenment spend millions on this day, why dont they spend energy on the needs of our country. we cannot compare 2012 and 1976, there is a 36 years difference, technology has changed million folds..
Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

KeRataBasadi

Some people are still talking "second transition", there will be one vele in the form of another June 16 caused by false promises and lack of political will, it will be young people again fighting for change while the old rest on their pensioned and dirty money laurels.
Report Abuse

Jun 19, 2012

Nastradamas

Nope ! I dont think we owe anybody anything.
I mean dont get me wrong and i dont mean to be disrespectful.
They('76 youth) were in that situation in that time, they had to do what needed to be done.
We werent there at the time............
I mean its just like saying you owe your parents for raising you, Damn !
Report Abuse

Read all 61 comments