The Youth of June 1976 were fearless, eager groups of individuals whose eyes had been focused on the dream of freedom, but they never crossed the line to destroy schools and clinics, a June 16 commemorative seminar at Unisa heard on Friday.
They burnt trains, travelled in the thick of night to hold meetings and plot the downfall of the apartheid master.
“We never burnt schools,” 1976 student leader Barney Mokgatle said.
“We knew that when all was said and done we had to go back to school and we always did.
”Mokgatle was one of the young people at the forefront of the June 16, 1976, uprising.
He was a member of the South African Student Movement and a member of the Action Committee which gave rise to the Soweto Student Representative Council.
“We would never have even considered burning down clinics,” he told participants at the seminar.
“They would shoot and injure us so we knew clinics were a vital element in society,” Mokgatle said.
He told his audience of Unisa professors and other academics, students and other interested parties that the major struggles of the time were for freedom and free education, but there were also other elements.
“There was need to improve black consciousness, people had lost their identity,” he said.
“If you were dark and had a flat nose you were ugly, and this encouraged our black sisters to bleach their skin and stretch their hair.”
He said when keeping people in chains was outlawed by the UN, apartheid masters changed tactics and tried to enslave the mind. “They chained us psychologically.”
They destroyed culture and made people forget about their lineage: “They knew that a tree without its roots held no sway,” the veteran said.
Tribalism was one of the mechanisms used to destroy the identity of the black man.
“Suddenly one tribe was at war with the other and all relationships at the root of us all were forgotten.”
And that weapon recently reared its ugly head in Vuwani when whole communities went on a rampage and burnt down schools.
He said free education had been one of the cornerstones of the fight by the youth of 76, but that dream had not become reality.
He said South Africa had economic world class status in comparison to its neighbours, yet some provided free education and even sent students abroad for education.
“What is the problem with us, why are we failing ourselves?” Mokgatle asked.
He shared stories of the days leading up the struggle and regaled his audience with tales of meetings and plans to retaliate by disrupting normal life as it was known.
There were tears and misty eyes when he spoke of the first person to be shot on the fateful June 16: “There was a shot and the next thing Hayston lay dead next to me, a big gash on his temple,” he said.
The mood turned sombre when he recalled the night of their flight out of the country in the aftermath of the uprisings and killings. They walked on unfamiliar ground, on unmarked terrain, he said.
Up mountains and down hills, and as he recalled this one in the audience broke into song and softly sang the words of a church hymn: “My light, please show me the way”.
Everyone in the room joined in.
“Sedi la ka, Mponesetse tsela (My light, please show me the way);
Ke tsamaye (so I am able to walk).”
“Ho lefifi (its dark); Hape ho sebaka ( And it’s also a long way)
Ntsamaise ( Please walk with me).”
The youth of 76 were the bravest part of the revolution, participants at the seminar agreed. They were known as “amadelakufa” because they stared death in the face and dared it to do what it could.
Honour was therefore theirs, participants said.
@ntsandvose
Pretoria News Weekend