Sejamothopo Motaure says that he regards the period between the day Hector Pieterson was shot and the death of Steve Bantu Biko as the first phase of “June 16”.
Strange as it may seem to express it this way today, “June 16” only hit Atteridgeville/Saulsville, Mamelodi and other townships around Pretoria at least a few days after that tragic day in the winter of 1976.
On that fateful day 40 years ago, the police shot and killed Hector Pieterson, 13, and other young people in Soweto when they intercepted and broke up a march by thousands of pupils from schools around the sprawling townships south-west of Joburg to the Orlando Stadium for a protest rally.
The pupils were protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans as medium of instruction in their schools by the apartheid government. “Away with Afrikaans!” declared the rudimentary, self-made placards they carried.
As it were, “June 16” really struck Atteridgeville on August 21,1976, when Irene Plalatse, 15, a pupil at Dr W F Nkomo Secondary School in the township, was shot and wounded by police while walking to the school’s library.
She later died in hospital on September 3.
In fact, June 16, 1976, started as “just another day” for me in Atteridgeville. The afternoon found me coaching pupils of Holy Trinity, the Catholic Secondary School in the township, in softball. As a top softball player with the Pretoria Cardinals, I had been asked by the “sisters” (nuns) who taught there to promote the sport at the school.
As word filtered through - there were no cellphones in those days but quick communication happened - that there was “trouble in Soweto and schoolchildren had been shot by the police”, the two (white) teachers who were with the pupils at the softball diamond, became quite anxious wanting to know if the people in the township would not turn on them.
I reassured them as best as I could that they were safe but I could see the fear in their eyes. That evening we saw on SABC-TV news how rioting had broken out in Soweto. The township seemed to be on fire.
Ironically, for years the National Party government had resisted introducing television in the country. As fate would have it, the “Soweto Uprising” erupted just a few months after television broadcasting was launched.
About a week later, disruption of classes and rioting hit the townships around Pretoria. “June 16” was happening. As the days went by many parts of the country became engulfed in rioting and other protest action.
I have always regarded the period between the day Pieterson was shot and the death of Steve Bantu Biko, the black consciousness leader, in the custody of the security police in September 1977, as the first phase of “June 16”.
The first words I wrote about “June 16” were published in LESEDI, a monthly newsletter produced by the City Council of Pretoria for the townships of Atteridgeville/Saulsville and Mamelodi.
I was reporter and editor of the small publication. Given the publishing cycle, the report was a dated, bland factual story about the main events of the day and subsequent rioting and related violence.
However, the story of “June 16” never stopped running and I continued to write it after I had joined the Pretoria News early in 1977.
The police used live ammunition, teargas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters. “Political funerals” became the order of the week in townships around Pretoria. The weapons of choice of the protesters were stones, all sorts of other missiles and petrol bombs.
There is nothing small or benign about a rubber bullet.
The projectile is damaging and can be lethal. About a decade into “June 16”, 3-year old Mittah Ngobeni died in September, 1985, after she was struck by a police rubber bullet at her home near the Saulsville Cemetery during a confrontation between police and mourners from a political funeral.
While covering one such funeral at the Catholic Church in Ramokgopa Street, Saulsville, I was briefly detained by the riot police.
I was taken to the temporary command centre of the riot police at the Atteridgeville police station. Fortunately, I could produce my press card as a journalist and was taken back to the funeral service.
On the way back, I fielded questions from the anxious (white) young policemen in camouflage riot gear who were in the military-type Casspir.
It was clear to me that many of them were fearful and would rather be anywhere than going to a township political funeral.
Disruptions of schooling, consumer boycotts, “black Christmases” and “stayaways” from work became the staple diet of the townships.
During any stayaway, nurses, doctors and journalists were allowed to go to work unmolested.
I believe “June 16” - Youth Day - lives in all of us.
*Motau is a DA Member of Parliament and former Pretoria News Staff Reporter.
Pretoria News