Remembering the youth of Soweto who gave their lives in protest on June 16, forty-nine years ago, is a privilege because their actions paved the way for many of the freedoms we all enjoy today.
The Soweto uprising shone a global light onto the brutalities of apartheid and united many individuals and organizations into the singular focus of ending that scourge. The young people of today should not try to make the June 1976 protests their struggle but use its reality to channel their own ambitions and dreams into focused projects and plans to change the country and the world for the better. Starting with a focus on academic excellence and completing their degrees or qualifications on time so that when opportunities for advancement arrives, they are ready to propel themselves, their families and communities into a future that is better than the one they’d have without tertiary education. The learners and students who protested in June 1976 did so for the right to learn and to learn in their mother tongue rather than having a language forced onto them by the apartheid regime. Young students today can study free from the pressures of apartheid, but with other concerns such as limited funding for tertiary education, crime, substance abuse, gender-based violence and the pressure to succeed in a society with limited opportunities.
I grew up in Kliptown and later Eldorado Park and on the wall of the room I shared with my sisters was a poster with the words, ‘justification for higher education’ written on it. This won’t make sense unless you know that beneath these words was a very compelling picture, one that certainly fuelled my desire to succeed. Use your imagination to decide what it is that you must see beneath such words to inspire you.
Many of us at SPU who are entrusted with the responsibility of preparing this generation’s young people for what lies ahead are ourselves evidence of the transformative power of education, so we can never neglect sharing the message that sacrifice and focus ensures a brighter future.
