Francesca Villette
An inferior education given to black pupils fuelled youth hatred for the apartheid system. In 1974, the South African Minister of Bantu Education and Development, MC Botha, issued a directive that Afrikaans be given equal status to English as a medium of instruction in African schools.
It wasn’t a new rule. Apartheid’s chief architect, Hendrik Verwoerd, had thought of it more than 20 years earlier when he had devised his Bantu Education package, and backed it with one of his most infamous observations: “There is no place for (the Bantu) in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.”
As early as March 1976 pupils began passive resistance against this. The outbreak started in Soweto on June 16, 1976, when more than 15 000 pupils gathered at the Orlando West Secondary School for a peaceful march.
It ended when the police and armed forces opened fire, killing 176 pupils. Within months the protests had spread to other parts of the country.
Cape Town also became a dominant site for this. Pupil demonstrations took place in black and coloured townships all over the Peninsula, including Langa, Gugulethu, Bellville, Bonteheuwel, Manenberg, Hanover Park and Lavender Hill.
Pupils from schools in these areas protested in solidarity with the pupils of Soweto, and in many instances, targeted educational institutions.
On August 10, 1976, part of a prefabricated building of the Peninsula College for Advanced Technical Education was burnt, and explosives were found at Goodhope Primary in Bellville South.
Pupils marched through townships with placards stating “Down with Bantu Education”.
In Langa, pupils marched to the police station where they handed their grievances to the police, and one pupil was shot dead and others scattered as pandemonium ensued.
In Gugulethu pupils were ordered by the police to disperse, but when they stood their ground the police fired teargas canisters at them. As a result between 25 and 30 people were arrested.
In Bellville, 600 pupils clashed with police during a march from the Bellville Training College.
On August 12, 1976, The Cape Times ran a front-page lead story headlined “Heavy riot toll in Cape”, devoting about 600 words to an angle mentioning “blacks that went on the rampage”, and “police had to resort to the use of shotguns, firing birdshot into crowds of looters”.
The story did little to explain why pupils and others were protesting. The closest it got was to say: “The unrest began yesterday morning at Langa High School when hundreds of demonstrating pupils gathered on an adjourning sports field. Soon afterwards the police riot squad moved into Washington Street which was crowded with thousands of people of all ages and warned the mob to disperse. Crowds began to gather in large numbers as heavily armed riot squad police formed up across the roadway. Police then moved away… but stopped again a short distance from the Langa police station as another crowd formed… beside the primary school.”