June 16th; reflections of a White Boy

In contrast to the usually flippant and self-indulgent tenor of this blog, this is--for a change--rather serious.

June 16th is Youth Day in South Africa. It marks and pays honour to the children who on and around that day, first took to the streets in protest against the practice of teaching in Afrikaans, the language of the then oppressor; that was the ostensible reason. In reality it was the culmination of many decades of building resentment against the apartheid government and state in South Africa.

It was the beginning of the end of apartheid, which finally came to an end in 1994.

I'd only arrived in South Africa 9 months previously from a small village in Wales. Politics--especially violent politics--was as much as mystery to me as the craters of the moon. I was just trying to pass my final year of schooling.

We lived on Kimberley Road, Robertsham in the south of Johannesburg, perhaps 5 miles as the crow flies from the edge of Soweto, the major ghetto of Jo'burg. Or if you like the embodiment of all the fears of the white elite.

One evening I was woken up by the rumble of traffic and my father talking quietly. I got up and joined mum and dad outside in the cold. Convoy after convoy of police and military vehicles were heading into Soweto. The photograph below (acknowledgements to the City of Johannesburg)is why. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of kids had finally give up and encouraged by their teachers had taken matters in to their own hands. No doubt many thought it was very exciting and at least a day off school. I doubt many thought that as they died.

A few nights later a Molotov Cocktail landed in our street. Also very exciting; except for my late father--an unabashed racist--who thought that the decision to move to South Africa may have been a monumental blunder.

Of course 30 years on people begin to forget and those days pass into history. We shouldn't. Shades of The Holocaust. My kids never knew apartheid. Thank God.