Sunday Times Youth Day flashback: The riots and beyond

16 June 2014 - 10:21 By Sunday Times Editorial
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Outside the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, South Africa, stands the famous picture by Sam Nzima of the child being carried by another pupil with his sister next to him.
Outside the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, South Africa, stands the famous picture by Sam Nzima of the child being carried by another pupil with his sister next to him.
Image: NEO BODUMELA

They were riots looking for a place to happen. The Afrikaans-in-schools issue was but the trigger ingredient in a bloody chemistry that, sooner or later, was going to set our urban Black townships aflame.

The violence is mindless, the loss of life tragic and the wanton destruction terrifying. But it is at their peril that White South Africans remain deaf to the message being so crudely, so menacingly transmitted through the smoke and the cordite. It reads: “People are living here. Notice us!”

In our tinder-box society only madmen will seek solutions through violence. And this week has shown how chaos can be compounded by vandals.

Yet we must never forget that this week’s dynamite had a long, long fuse. True, it may have been deliberately ignited by people who will not hesitate to employ even children to attain political ends. Equally true, though, is that agitators succeed only when mulish authority allows conditions to develop that are favourable for those who thrive on havoc.

The failure of two men in particular, Minister MC Botha and his disingenuous deputy, Dr Treurnicht, to recognise the early-warning signals is inexcusable. They and many of their key officials simply sat, hoping the trouble would go away by itself. And the subsequent comments, especially those of Dr Treurnicht, were chilling in their insensitivity and arrogance. While such men are in office, the Government cannot regain credibility, nor will the crisis be defused.

(At the other extremity, of course, their folly is matched by silly White students playing with material too combustible for youths to handle.)

As for the trigger issue itself — Afrikaans — it is a tragedy that the dignity of a noble language should be affronted by a system that seeks to thrust it to no sensible purpose and against all educational precepts, down the throats of unwilling, ill-equipped Black pupils.

By all means teach Afrikaans as a subject. But why, when White children have a choice, must Blacks be compelled to accept it as a medium of instruction?

The highest priority now is to end the disorder. Each new day of turmoil brings greater destruction of facilities, loss of life and injury. But it would be folly if the emphasis were only on suppression and not on reform.

But good could still flow from catastrophe if it causes the authorities to examine the things behind this week’s violence. When the smoke has cleared we should see what breeds frustration — and worse. Housing problems, inadequate transport, crowded schools, hurtful bureaucracy, a feeling of powerlessness ... these are the grievances that make Soweto a time bomb.

Their solution does not lie in Umtata or any homeland capital. It lies in Pretoria, in Cape Town and in the offices of Government officials.

And in the minds of all White South Africans who dare no longer ignore their Black, urban — and permanent — neighbours.

This story first appeared in the Sunday Times newspaper on June 20 1976.

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