It’s an ordinary Wednesday at Naledi High School in Soweto. Groups of pupils, clad in black-and-white jerseys, converge at the school gates.
Some tweet or WhatsApp with reckless abandon, while others sing along to R&B and hip-hop music on their cellphones.
Hanging out in cyberspace is one concern; the other is what will be in the paper of the mid-year exams they are writing this week.
It may not be their first thought as they start each school day, but as each June 16 rolls out, the pupils become acutely aware of their school’s unique history.
This is the school that sparked the conflagration which led to the demise of apartheid.
On June 8, 1976, police arrived at the school in a government-issue VW Beetle to arresting Tebello Motapanyane, the leader of the local branch of the South African Students’ Movement (SASM). The pupils stoned the cops, forcing them to flee, and torched the car.
Motapanyane and Enos Ngutshane were key players in what would turn into the 1976 uprising. Ngutshane had penned a letter to then-minister of Bantu education, Michiel Coenraad Botha (known as MC Botha), protesting about subjects being taught in Afrikaans. When the many calls fell on deaf ears. the students met with other leaders on June 13 and forged ahead with plans to protest on June 16.
“Trust me when I say that a lot has changed here in Naledi and at this school,” says 55-year-old Salamina Molefi, who is sweeping her yard.
The mother of four lives a stone’s throw away from the school. She recalls how her eldest cousin was one of the pupils who set the cops’ car alight.
“He’s an Anglican priest now but back then he was radical. I remember how our gogo hid his clothes. He and the other boys were supposed to change into overalls before heading to Lourenço Marques to cross the border. but I told on him. Because of this, my grandmother refused to allow him to go. I think that is how he survived,” she says.
Molefi is happy that the grim era has been replaced by hope. “There is a schoolground now, a parking lot and new classrooms. We didn’t even dream of it,” she says.
Fast forward to 2016 and traces of Ngutshane and Motapanyane’s boldness can be found in 20-year-old Grade 12 pupil Nhlanhla Masweli. The Emdeni South resident is the leader of Congress of SA Students at the school.
“If Enos and Tebello were here today I’d thank them for their bravery. They turned the dreams of Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King jr into purpose and if I were present on June 16 I would have been in the front line,” he says.
Masweli and his peers sit in a neatly titled Business Studies classroom with tablets on their desks - a far cry from the Afrikaans textbooks and woordeboek (dictionary) the students in the 1970s were forced to use. Their teacher, Nokuthula Zulu, writes the notes for the day using her finger on the touch-screen board.
The pupils wear their winter matric sweaters with the message, “Mama I Made It!” The message is derived from hip-hop artist Cassper Nyovest’s lyrics.
“The black child can now be an entrepreneur and anything he wants. No longer will they be reduced to being domestics. I have the utmost confidence that they will make it,” Zulu says.
Afrikaans doesn’t feature at the school, nor will it.
Teacher Tshepo Maphosa, now 55, remembers: “Back then it was gee this and gee that” (give this or give that) adding that they were required to study mathematics, history and biology in Afrikaans.
“I had no choice but to learn. My father was a teacher and, man, did we both struggle. A man who had studied all his life in English and Sesotho was now required to turn to Afrikaans. I couldn’t even correct him because an adult was always right,” he says.
The uniform is the only feature that has remained the same at the school. Additional classrooms have been built and there is a new staff room.
Deputy principal Andrew Moeletsi was a Grade 10 pupil at the school when the riots erupted. He recalls how his teachers used to be crammed in a tiny staff room.
Outside the school red paving runs down Nyakale Street into Matshaya Street and to Morris Isaacson High School in Jabavu. It was built by the government to mark the route that the students from Naledi and other schools walked to Morris Isaacson High, where they were addressed by student leader Tsietsi Mashinini.
Today the school has a 71 percent matric pass rate. They try to instill discipline.
Grade 9 pupil Oratile Masilo tells how the girls at the school are not allowed hairpieces or braids and that everyone has to adhere to the school’s stringent uniform policy.
But the history is there. Across the street, a June 16 Memorial Acre and park are a stark reminder of the events and the uprising.
If Naledi and Morris Isaacson high schools were humans, 40-year-old Veronica Sello believes they’d be bold men and women, full of wisdom but crippled by the scars they’ve had to endure in the struggle for providing quality education to black children.
Sello, who lives across the street from Morris Isaacson, says she too struggles with the reality that her life is not any better.
“Our education system is not yet uhuru (free). In fact Bantu education was better. We can’t be content that our children are told that 30 percent is an acceptable pass mark. We need to do better,” she says.
Saturday Star