June 16 was the invoice for our democracy — 50 years on, it remains unpaid

Several weeks ago I was fortunate to attend the opening of an academic conference organised by Wits University and the University of Johannesburg to celebrate and study the Soweto Uprising of June 1976 and the protests it catalysed across South Africa. In a packed Senate Room in Solomon Mahlangu House, the opening panel was made up of four veteran activists – Seth Mazibuko, Saths Cooper, Nozipho Diseko and Sibongile Mkhabela. All four were on the ground in June 1976: organising, teaching, or, as students, caught up in the melee.

The four spoke with remarkable modesty. Their relative youth and intellectual vigour give the lie to any idea that 16 June 1976 is part of a dim and distant past.

They looked back 50 years, not in heroic nostalgia, not in the language of political cliches, not even with rancour, but with deep human insights expressed in plain language. Their words conveyed the poetry of heart-felt emotion and unresolved trauma. They had the legitimacy of witness.

They exhibited none of the pomposity we have come to associate with Struggle braggarts.

None of the brittle sensitivity of leaders who know they have betrayed the values of liberation and so have to overemphasise their Struggle credentials.

In fact, there was a rare spirit in the air that evening: the ancestors of June 16th past.

As one speaker put it “June 16th was the invoice for our democracy”.

Something’s rotten in the state

The speakers had not caucused their comments beforehand. Yet all four agreed that something had gone badly wrong with the democracy June 16th made almost inevitable.

Ironically, they contrasted their schools then, hotbeds of learning and teaching, with the lamentable state of the same schools now.

They juxtaposed the passion of rebellion with the defeat that young people feel today.

They lamented a crisis of a different kind that faces “the class of 2026” and other young people.

A day later, at a meeting of the Union Against Hunger, an elderly resident of Soweto observed dejectedly: “Looking around our locations you just see sadness in the face of children. They are not as nourished as they used to be, their faces are dark because of use of drugs.”

Finishing what was started

Another feeling that pervaded the air that night, and which was expressed repeatedly, is that South Africa has reached a new moment of reckoning. “Something is about to hit us again,” warned Tebogo Suping, a young woman activist with her ears close to the community.

“If we blink we might lose it all, which would be a sad indictment on us all,” said Mkhabela.

As I listened, the enormity of June 16th struck me; the debt that each one of us still owes to those young people.

Our democracy is unfinished, our poverty intolerable, the suffering of young people – men and women – inestimable, the inequality we accept a rebuttal of our claims to believe in ubuntu.

But it’s a far cry from apartheid. And with the rights entrenched in our Constitution we have the tools to build a better society.

We need new urgency to address the socioeconomic horrors – hunger, violence, disease, poor or no education – that face so many people.

I began to dream.

On 16 June the Seth Mazibuko Foundation and a host of organisations – churches, NGOs, universities – are organising a commemorative march in Soweto. The aim is to complete the route of the 1976 march of school students that was so violently interrupted.

Under the theme “Finishing what was started, Completing the Historic March”, it starts at 10am at “Confrontation Corner” (corner of Moema and Vilakazi streets in Orlando East, the place where Hector Pieterson was shot), and retraces the intended original route to Orlando Stadium.

In my dream the march does not have the usual look of a post-apartheid march. The poor are not left to protest for themselves. It becomes about solidarity. It is multiracial, intergenerational, multi-ethnic and national, inclusive.

Vilakazi Street fills up with a sea of organisational banners – trade unions, churches, schools, sports clubs, NGOs – and made-for-the day posters. A safe space for all of us in our diversity.

In my dream the procession is led by academics in gowns from Wits University and UJ, then followed by health workers in white coats, nurses in uniform, teachers; there are musicians, poets and actors.

In my dream it’s a carnival of recommitment, signalling a serious intent to peacefully push aside the com-tsotsis who have corruptly taken over large parts of the government and business, and the oligarchs and elites who refuse to meaningfully share the country’s wealth and resources, leaving millions of people hungry (literally).

We cannot continue like this. To do so is to invite greater violence and breakdown.

In my dream the march is a hopeful alternative to the politics of hatred, nationalism and division that is being kindled at the moment. A reminder that, when organised, the forces of social justice and morality vastly outnumber the corrupt, cynical and violent.

A chance for each one of us to rededicate ourselves.

Our country (and not just our football team) needs you at this moment. Stand up for it! #ApathyMustFall. #CompassionMust Rise

See you there. DM