A-Infos (en) South Africa, An anarchist Journal Zabalaza: #7 - REMEMBERING AND LEARNING FROM THE PAST: THE 1976 UPRISING AND THE AFRICAN WORKING CLASS

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising in South 
Africa, which marked the start of the fall of apartheid, and inspired activists 
worldwide. African working youth played a leading role, and their sacrifices 
showed us that ordinary people can make a difference to the injustices of our 
world. Revolutionaries should commemorate this struggle, but also learn from 
its failings.
RACE AND CLASS
The 1976 uprising was sparked by the imposition of Afrikaans-language teaching 
in African schools, seen as an act of national oppression. But there was more 
at play. The 1970s saw growing inflation creating much discontent amongst urban 
African youth. South Africa's economy, which boomed in the 1960s, entered 
crisis in the 1970s. Unemployment grew steadily, reaching levels unseen for 
decades.

This was fuelled by under-funded, racist and authoritarian government 
institutions like the local government township administrations, the Bantu 
Education system and the miserable conditions in the segregated township 
schools. Although the government and large companies such as Anglo American 
increased spending on education - mainly to grow the semi-skilled workforce, as 
large companies were facing major skill shortages - these schools remained 
under-resourced and over-crowded.

They lacked adequate teaching staff or facilities like libraries, sports 
grounds etc., and ranked the highest in terms of dropout rates and 
teacher-to-student ratios. Corporal punishment was also used extensively, often 
sadistically: at Vulamazibuko Higher Primary School in Diepkloof, for instance, 
teachers frequently punished students by placing their feet in cold water, and 
then whipping their toes.

The State began to experiment with neo-liberal policies as well. According to 
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report, a key factor in the 1976 
uprising was a leap in rates and service charges by the West Rand 
Administration Board, which had just lost the R2-million subsidy it had 
received from the Johannesburg City Council.

State spending on education was decreased at the same time that the number of 
schooling years was reduced. The abolition of standard six created a huge 
"bulge" of students being pushed into the first year of secondary school, 
leading to intensified overcrowding and strain on resources.



RESISTANCE

Large schools concentrated African students together, shared frustrations from 
national oppression and capitalist crisis united them, and they started to look 
for ways in which they could express and resolve their grievances. Neither 
parents, nor the exiled nationalist organisations like the ANC, SACP and PAC, 
provided much direction.

As a result, African youth established their own organisations such as the 
African Student Movement (ASM), which organised students in Soweto schools and 
aimed to take up student demands and create social and political awareness. 
Selby Semela - an 18-year-old school pupil and activist - recalled that "the 
old spinster-huckster organisations" like the ANC, PAC and SACP played almost 
no role.

Instead, members of ASM were influenced by young teachers from homeland 
universities like Turfloop, who promoted Black Consciousness (BC). Drawing on 
the ideas of Steve Biko and others, BC stressed the need to instil a sense of 
pride and self-worth within "black" people before political organisation took 
place. Here, the term "black" was used to include Coloureds and Indians. The 
ASM changed its name to the South African Student Movement, and tried to 
organise beyond Soweto.

Other important events inspired Soweto youth. The 1973-4 Durban strikes, which 
spread to Port Elizabeth and the East Rand, shattered the political quiescence 
of the 1960s, and signalled the rebirth of African trade unions. The sudden 
collapse of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique and Angola led many to believe 
that national liberation was increasingly possible within apartheid South Africa.

So, when the Bantu Education Department tried to implement a new "fifty - 
fifty" language policy - half of the exam subjects were going to be taught in 
Afrikaans, a language few teachers spoke, and that many Africans considered the 
language of apartheid officials, police and racist Whites - revolt was on the 
horizon.



SPARKS AND FIRE

School boards were the first to challenge the language policy, but the Bantu 
Education department was unbending. Its intransigence became the focus of 
students' political anger. By February 1976 students were organising protests.

Then a mass demonstration was organised in Soweto for June 16th. Semela was on 
the "action committee," which later became the Soweto Students Representative 
Council (SSRC). The protest attracted around fifteen thousand youths. Many 
displayed their hostility towards the language policy by waving placards such 
as "Blacks are not dustbins- Afrikaans stinks" and "Afrikaans is oppressors' 
language".

Police had made no preparations for the event, a protest on a scale unseen in 
years, and tensions rose. At 9' o clock that morning, police and students 
clashed on Vilikazi Street: police fired tear gas, demonstrators threw stones, 
and police opened fire. Two children died, many were injured. The TRC found 
that Colonel Theuns "Rooi Rus" Swanepoel of the SA Police Riot Unit - a 
notorious thug - adopted a "shoot to kill" policy.

The police action ignited the fury of the young marchers. By midday rioting had 
broken out across Soweto. Cars were stoned and barricades erected. Arson 
attacks took place on administration buildings, schools and beer halls. Two 
Whites were attacked and killed: one was Dr Melville Edelstein, a liberal who 
had just published a report warning of impending unrest in Soweto.

Despite the police's heavy-handed methods, riots quickly spread across the 
country, and protests - including three general strikes, of varying success - 
continued into 1977. In the Western Cape, the revolt came to include many 
Coloured youth - most of whom were Afrikaans speaking - a very significant 
development. By the time the uprising ended there were more than 575 dead (451 
killed by police), and 3,907 injured (2,389 by police).

The SSRC and other organisations played a leading role, but the revolt was the 
property of no organisation: it was spontaneous and militant. Contrary to a 
myth now promoted by ANC leaders (and the claims of then-Prime Minister B.J. 
Vorster), the ANC, as an organisation, played a very limited role. BC was 
central amongst students, while many workers adhered to the independent 
politics of the reborn unions.



LESSONS

The 1976 uprising marked the beginning of a new era. The costs were high, but 
Soweto showed that struggle was possible, opening the last chapter in the 
anti-apartheid struggle. The 1976 revolt rightly occupies a central place in 
the story of national liberation. The language issue sparked the revolt, but it 
was only the match to a tinderbox of grievances from capitalist restructuring 
and national oppression.

The revolt should not be romanticised - it involved State terror, racial 
attacks, the first use of the notorious "necklace" against supposed informers, 
and the first major conflicts between township residents and hostel dwellers 
around the Mzimhlope hostel.

Revolutionaries must also learn from past mistakes, as much as they should 
celebrate past victories. There were inherent weaknesses in the politics of the 
uprising. BC was a key factor in the struggle at the time, and the State found 
it necessary to ban 17 BC organisations and murder Biko before the revolt ended.

But while BC's emphasis on "black" pride was very important - every national 
liberation struggle will involve a similar mental liberation by oppressed 
groups - BC never had a clear strategy to change society. After the end of the 
revolt, many SSRC leaders fled into exile, ­ forming the South African Youth 
Revolutionary Council (SAYRCO) in 1979, a body that proved as sterile and 
ineffective as the exiled ANC, SACP and PAC.

BC stressed personal change, rather than building counter-power. It very rarely 
developed an anti-capitalist position, even though national oppression and 
capitalist exploitation were deeply interlinked in apartheid South Africa.



THE FALL OF BC

In the late 1970s, many BC activists came to a more socialist position, 
exemplified by AZAPO and the National Forum, but BC had lost its moment. It was 
sidelined within a few years by formations like the FOSATU unions, the United 
Democratic Front and the rebirth of ANC influence. In any case, the socialism 
of groups like AZAPO was very heavily Soviet in orientation - hardly different 
to the SACP. Brutal attacks and murders of BC stalwarts by ANC supporters put a 
further nail in the coffin.

Some BC exiles, however, pointed to a different approach. Semela drew 
anti-capitalist conclusions, and became a libertarian communist, with a 
position very close to anarchism. He believed that BC learned all the wrong 
lessons from 1976. Having managed to "leave in the dust the false goals and 
methods of the struggles of the forties and fifties," it had no clear 
alternative. The 1976 revolt showed the power of working class spontaneity, but 
BC leaders subsequently decided to lay "firm claim to the dubious honour of the 
avant-garde party." The revolt showed the importance of self-organisation, but 
the SSRC ran itself "as a self-appointed executive, dictatorially controlled by 
its chairman."

SAYRCO was no different. Its main activity was to send leaders into South 
Africa to call upon the youth to join it in exile, when the 1970s had shown 
that the real struggle was within the country, with the exiled groups impotent. 
The eventual outcome was predictable: the exiled BC groups set up their own 
tiny "army," a pale shadow of the exiled ANC's own failed armed struggle, and 
even less effective.



CLASS STRUGGLE AND NATIONAL LIBERATION

The 1994 elections showed that the national liberation struggle in South Africa 
had been conquered by the bourgeois anti-imperialism of African nationalism, 
which aimed to deracialise capitalism through the State. This was the ANC project.

The alternative anarchist/syndicalist tradition of working class 
anti-imperialism - which aimed to merge struggles against national oppression, 
capitalism and the State in a single revolutionary process - was long buried.

This does not mean that 1994 was meaningless. There were very real gains, like 
the end of legalised White supremacy, apartheid repression and press controls, 
even if there were also defeats, like the survival of capitalism.

It was here that BC was tested one last time, and found wanting. By the 1990s, 
the once-mighty BC movement was a tiny isolated current, mainly middle class. 
It insisted - contrary to all evidence - that the 1994 elections were entirely 
meaningless and should be boycotted.

The elections, however, were a massive victory for the African working class, 
even if that victory is now increasingly overshadowed by the ANC's neo-liberal 
war on the poor. AZAPO saw only the defeats, boycotted the elections, and 
largely faded away as the African working class overwhelmingly voted to end 
apartheid and oust the National Party government.



A REAL MONUMENT

We anarchists have worked with BC activists on several occasions - the fact we 
are both outside the ANC tradition was important - but we do not think BC can 
provide a real alternative. The old-style BC of the 1970s lacked a strategy and 
a vision; the second generation BC of AZAPO - and the more recent SOPA 
breakaway - modelled its socialism too heavily on the State-capitalism of Cuba 
and the Soviet Union, and misunderstood the real changes that took place in the 
1990s. And, as Semela shows, some BC activists found an answer in libertarian 
socialism.

What, then, is to be done? Plural and organic forms of working class 
organisation should be promoted, working class autonomy and anti-capitalist and 
anti-authoritarian politics and organisation need to be fostered, and struggle 
needs to be made everyday practice.

Building tomorrow today in such a manner, we can change the world, and honour 
the victims of 1976 with a real monument: a society free of class and national 
oppression. It is a far more fitting monument than having Thabo Mbeki cynically 
and disgracefully appropriating the 1976 revolt for the ANC.


Selby Semela, Sam Thompson & Norman Abraham, [1979] 2005

REFLECTIONS ON THE BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN REVOLUTION

Is downloadable here: http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/africa_resist/bcm&sa_rev.pdf

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web site link: http://www.zabalaza.net/index02.htm
pdf of  #7 - http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/sapams/zab07.pdf

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