Learners from Phefeni Junior Senior Secondary School displaying placards ahead of an event commemorating 50 years since the June 16 Soweto uprising. (Photo: Salim Nkosi). On Monday, 15 June 2026, learners from two historical schools in Orlando West, Soweto, gathered for an interactive seminar on the state of education 50 years after the 1976 Soweto uprising. Held at Phefeni Junior Secondary School, the event brought together learners and alumni from both Phefeni and Orlando West High School.
The setting carried immense historical weight, as the very place where the student-led resistance of 1976 first ignited. In May of that year, learners at Phefeni began boycotting classes in protest against the forced imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. Within days, solidarity protests mobilised and spread to surrounding schools.
/file/attachments/orphans/IMG_9139_764466.jpg "Members of the panel answered questions posed by learners at the hall about career choices and course guidance post-high school. (Photo: Salim Nkosi).")
This growing wave of resistance set the stage for the morning of June 16, 1976, when thousands of students from across Soweto initiated a peaceful march toward Orlando Stadium. The protest route was intentionally mapped so that students marching from different directions would pass via and converge past Phefeni.
It was right outside the school that apartheid police intercepted the peaceful crowd, firing teargas before unleashing live ammunition on the children.
During this immediate clash, just steps from the school building at the corner of Moema and Vilakazi Streets, 12-year-old Hector Pieterson was shot and killed.
Remembering what happened
On Monday, there was an undeniable buzz in the school hall as participants filled the venue with enthusiasm and smiles for the event hosted by Jozi My Jozi and ABSA.
A panel of career experts, alumni and motivational speakers set the tone by sharing their own life stories. They stressed that for young people standing on the precipice of life beyond matric, learning how to create and chase opportunities is the ultimate driving force for long-term success.
/file/attachments/orphans/552c430f-3f48-4907-af3f-f1628364c1ed_218367.jpg "Carol Dyantyi at Phefeni Secondary School in Orlando West, Soweto, where she reflected on her experience of the 1976 Soweto uprising. (Photo: Mabatho Marakalla)")
Carol Dyantyi, known as Mum Carol, a former student from Morris Isaacson High School, who was involved in the 1976 marches, led the conversation.
“When we marched, I never knew that one day I will be here 50 years down the line to tell you how much this seminar means to us as former students,” she said.
Dyantyi, as the founder of Ikageng, an organisation that focuses on psychosocial, education, and nutrition support, is famously known in her community as the mother of Orlando because of her passion for children and the rich history that she carries as an education activist at that time. Ikageng is a community-based organisation operating in Orlando West, Soweto.
She painted a daunting image of how she had spent six months in prison and would be interrogated for hours without food as a punishment for refusing to give information to the police.
“I look at how things changed from back then to now, I keep on asking myself how we forgot the sacrifices that my generation did during that time,” she told Daily Maverick.
“Police used to come here and drag us out from classrooms to various police stations, as young as we were. I could not even sit down for matric examination like most of you will because I was in jail,” she added.
Paying it forward
Two alumni from Orlando West High School were invited to the seminar. Sean Legodi (19), a second-year computer science student at the University of Cape Town, told Daily Maverick he had not realised how important it is to have been a student at the school until he went to UCT to study.
Kgabo Phooko (19) said that he felt honoured to have been a student at Orlando West High School, adding, “If it was not for our grandparents, I doubt that this school was going to get where it is right now.”
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He completed his matric two years ago and now studies accounting at the University of the Western Cape.
Bheki Khumalo, a leader associated with Ikageng, drew a sharp contrast between then and now. During his own schooling in Orlando West, he said, nobody came to motivate them. But he told learners he envied them not for what they have, but that they didn’t have to struggle as much as previous generations.
He was supported by Ikageng during his upbringing, and after graduating from university, he took it upon himself to return to the organisation that raised him and be part of it.
“It was important for Phefeni Senior Secondary School to host this seminar because the march that started at Morris Isaacson High ended at this school, and the majority of the kids in Orlando West are not aware of what happened in June 1976,” he said.
Representatives from the Department of Basic Education were also present. Moketsi Nchoba from the DBE used his address to guide learners on subject choices in Grade 10, and to make a case for entrepreneurship as a response to a job market under strain.
“Our role here is to promote entrepreneur education, which has been recently introduced by the department,” he said, noting that only a handful of schools, including Orlando West High, currently run the programme.
“Our goal is to have it running for all high schools in the country by next year,” he added. DM