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    Soweto Student Uprising

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    On June 16, 1976, thousands of students in Soweto, South Africa gathered to protest being forced to use Afrikaans, the language of their white oppressors, in school. When the large, peaceful crowd was stopped by police, violence broke out as police fired into the group, killing two students and injuring hundreds. This sparked widespread uprisings across South Africa against apartheid rule. The brutal killings shocked the world and galvanized the youth of South Africa in the fight for liberation.

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    Soweto Student Uprising

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    api-236340289
    471 views1 page
    On June 16, 1976, thousands of students in Soweto, South Africa gathered to protest being forced to use Afrikaans, the language of their white oppressors, in school. When the large, peaceful crowd was stopped by police, violence broke out as police fired into the group, killing two students and injuring hundreds. This sparked widespread uprisings across South Africa against apartheid rule. The brutal killings shocked the world and galvanized the youth of South Africa in the fight for liberation.

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    On June 16, 1976, thousands of students in Soweto, South Africa gathered to protest being forced to use Afrikaans, the language of their white oppressors, in school. When the large, peaceful crowd was stopped by police, violence broke out as police fired into the group, killing two students and injuring hundreds. This sparked widespread uprisings across South Africa against apartheid rule. The brutal killings shocked the world and galvanized the youth of South Africa in the fight for liberation.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    471 views1 page

    Soweto Student Uprising

    Uploaded by

    api-236340289
    On June 16, 1976, thousands of students in Soweto, South Africa gathered to protest being forced to use Afrikaans, the language of their white oppressors, in school. When the large, peaceful crowd was stopped by police, violence broke out as police fired into the group, killing two students and injuring hundreds. This sparked widespread uprisings across South Africa against apartheid rule. The brutal killings shocked the world and galvanized the youth of South Africa in the fight for liberation.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Soweto Student Uprising

    On the morning of June 16, 1976, thousands of students from the African
    township of Soweto, outside Johannesburg, gathered at their schools to
    participate in a student-organized protest demonstration. Many of them carried
    signs that read, 'Down with Afrikaans' and 'Bantu Education to Hell with it;'
    others sang freedom songs as the unarmed crowd of schoolchildren marched
    towards Orlando soccer stadium where a peaceful rally had been planned. The
    crowd swelled to more than 10,000 students. En route to the stadium,
    approximately fifty policemen stopped the students and tried to turn them back.
    At first, the security forces tried unsuccessfully to disperse the students with tear
    gas and warning shots. Then policemen fired directly into the crowd of
    demonstrators. Many students responded by running for shelter, while others
    retaliated by pelting the police with stones.
    That day, two students, Hastings Ndlovu and Hector
    Pieterson, died from police gunfire; hundreds more
    sustained injuries during the subsequent chaos that
    engulfed Soweto. The shootings in Soweto sparked a
    massive uprising that soon spread to more than 100
    urban and rural areas throughout South Africa.
    The immediate cause for the June 16, 1976, march was student opposition to a
    decree issued by the Bantu Education Department that imposed Afrikaans as the
    medium(way) of instruction in half the subjects in higher primary (middle school)
    and secondary school (high school). Since members of the ruling National Party
    spoke Afrikaans, black students viewed it as the "language of the oppressor."
    Moreover, lacking fluency in Afrikaans, African teachers and pupils experienced
    first-hand the negative impact of the new policy in the classroom.
    The brutal killing of the school children on June 16, 1976, shocked the
    international community. Newspapers across the world published Sam Nzima's
    photograph of a dying Hector Peterson on their front page. In the meantime,
    South African security forces, equipped with armored tanks and live ammunition,
    poured into Soweto. Their instructions were to shoot to kill, for the sake of "law
    and order." By nightfall another eleven more people had been shot dead
    (Bonner). Students in Soweto responded by pelting the police with stones and
    attacking what they regarded to be symbols of the apartheid government. Across
    much of Soweto government buildings and liquor stores were looted and burned.
    The politicization and activism of young South Africans in Soweto and beyond
    galvanized the liberation movements and set in motion a series of
    transformations that ultimately led to the demise(end) of apartheid (Karis and
    Carter 180-84).
    http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?id=65-258-3&page=4

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