Last
week Friday marked 41 years since the Soweto Students’ Uprising that took place
on the 16th June 1976, a day that ushered a decisive turning point
in the liberation struggle in Azania (SA).
Today
the day is a celebrated national holiday re-branded as ‘Youth Day’, a day in
which contributions of young people in the liberation project are usually
evoked and celebrated. In fact, the whole month of June has become christened
as ‘Youth Month’.
But,
there are serious distortions and misrepresentations of historical facts in the
dominant public narratives around the 1976 Students’ Uprising. One of most
critical of these distortions is the persistent subtle projection of that
uprising as the somewhat exclusive initiative of young men, to the complete
exclusion and erasure of the invaluable contributions and sacrifices of young
women of that time.
Very
often, when June 16 is discussed or commemorated, the painful experiences,
sacrifices and contributions of the young Black women of the 1976 generation in
the fight against the white supremacist education are largely downplayed
(mentioned in passing), or completely erased and silenced.
It
is as though June 16 was the sole initiative of the prominent male students like
Tsietsi Mashinini and Khotso Sethloho only (and of course, the first boy victim, Zolile Hector
Peterson); as though no Black women were involved at all in the planning
meetings and the subsequent protest on that fateful day and weeks after.
The
names and identities of young women rarely appear even when victims of that
June 16 massacre are evoked in public dialogues, intellectual discourse or
media reports. These Black women are continuously rendered invisible by the
entire system; they simply don’t exist, they are not regarded as worthy
subjects of his-story.
For
example, there are many female students who were shot and killed at various
places around Chaiwelo when the Uprising began at Nghungunyane Secondary
School, whose identities remain a mystery till this day. Other examples are two
specific women from Dlamini whose involvement in the June 16 Uprising resulted
in their lifetime confinement to wheelchairs.
On
the 17th June 1976 a young Black girl, Hermina Leroke, was shot dead
in Diepkloof after she and her peers had seen a helicopter and ran. Her
companions and friends witnessed her killing by the police. Her name, like many
other young women who died, is unknown.
Even
when pictures of the June 16 events are shown on any public platforms, the
selective gendering of the images used is quite apparent. In the media, in
academia and in political spaces the historic images used to tell the story are
those with largely male students.
Images
of the June 16 uprising with young Black women leading in front, carrying
placards with revolutionary messages alongside the male students, defiant
against military and police armoury, and leading in front during the marches,
are rarely published or used.
Consequently,
the only stories that are told are those of the brave young men of that
generation; those of the many brave, but nameless, young women don’t matter
much in our national consciousness and memory.
Take
Sam Nzima’s famous image of Mbuyisa Makhubu carrying Zolile Peterson’s dead
body for example. In the same frame on that image is a clearly emotional
Antionnette Sithole. But she bears little significance, she is afforded no
historic currency at all besides being known as the sister of the dead boy
carried by Makhubu whose whereabouts are today unknown. She is cast either an
ahistorical or unhistorical object in the enterprise of historical manufacture.
Nothing is said about the fact that she was a young woman who had made a
conscious decision, like many others, to protest on that day. We simply know
her as ‘Hector’s sister’.
The
subtle consensus constructed through this distorted version of and approach to
history is that June 16 was, firstly, conceived by men and led by men only;
secondly, an exclusive initiative by students only; and thirdly, a one day
event which changed the course of history.
Stories
and experiences of less known people, particularly women, involved in June 16
are generally disregarded and undermined. There are numerous Black women,
little known of because they were not in leadership positions or did not appear
on photographer’s frames, whose involvement, contributions and experiences
during the Uprising were significantly profound.
Even
the only woman who was an executive member of the Soweto Students’
Representative Council (SSRC) and General Secretary of the South African
Student Movement (SASM) that planned and organized the June 16 Uprising,
Sibongile Mkhabela, is least spoken about and less known. Her contributions to
and sacrifices for the liberation project are unknown to today’s youth.
And
she is not an exception.
Think
of the silenced broader influences of women like Winnie Motlalepula Kgware who worked
very closely with the students as a teacher and had an influential role in the
launch of the South African Students' Organisation (SASO), later becoming the
President of Black People’s Convention (BPC), an umbrella body of the Black
Consciousness Movement. Mama Kgware’s name, the first woman to be elected as president
of a political organization in South Africa, never appears on any public
platforms in this country.
There
are many Black women who were directly involved in the June 16 Uprising, like
Dikeledi Motswene who was a grade 9 pupil at Ithute Senior Secondary in 1976,
Priscilla Msesenyane who was a grade 4 pupil at St Matthews Roman Catholic
School, Naledi Kedi Motsau who was a grade 12 pupil at Naledi High School and
Martha Matthews who was a grade 12 pupil at Kelekitso Senior Secondary, whose
stories never get registered on our collective national memory and consciousness.
Other
residents and Black people of Soweto who were directly or indirectly involved
and affected by the 1976 Students’ Uprising, like community activists, parents,
officials, shop owners, nurses, doctors and teachers like Nozipho Joyce
Mxakathi (now Diseko) also disappear completely from our memory when the story
is narrated.
Another
serious limitation of the way memory about June 16 is reconstructed today is
the lack of detail about the subsequent arrests, tortures and killings that
occurred days and months after that initial day; right up to the trial of the
Soweto 11 who were accused of sedition for planning and organizing the student
protest in 1976.
For
days, weeks and months after June 16 the Black community was under siege and
terrorized by blood-thirsty police whose mandate was to capture or kill student
leaders. In the book, ‘Soweto 16 June
1976: Personal Accounts Of The Uprising’, Martha Matthews who took part in
the June 16 protests is quoted as having said “the following day it was worse because these boers were now following
people inside their yards. We could not go out. We could not go buy in shops…
The boers’ cars were patrolling, and they were driving very slow, very slow. I
am telling you, if you want to die just get outside the house… They could even
shoot a toddler as young as six years”.
Then
there are stories of those that died on June 16; none speaks for the dead as
history is reconstructed and told. The contestations over the lifeless bodies
of those killed that ensued between the State, their families and communities
are muted and unknown.
One
person who tells this story is Thomas Ntuli who was a grade 8 student in 1976.
In the above-mentioned book he reveals that “the
victims of June 16, and the days thereafter, would not be buried like the other
dead. Their bodies did not belong to their families. They were contested
between the State, the families and the community. Community members wanted to
inscribe the bodies with messages for the ‘the struggle’. The State, however,
demanded that the burial should not be political”.
This
parochial approach to history also minimizes the scale of the viciousness,
violence and brutality of the racist apartheid regime. The extent to which, not
only the students, but the entire Black community and families were affected by
the June 16 Uprising becomes obscured and blurred.
Stories
of home invasions at night, police threats, beatings, sexual harassment,
interrogations and torture of many women, mostly mothers, grandmothers and
aunts of students, are downplayed and mentioned in passing at least, or
completely erased at worst.
This
obfuscates the stories and experiences of many ordinary Black people, women
especially. It inscribes glorified men as the sole-supreme actors and only
agents of history, projecting women as mere insignificant shadows, passive,
without any agency. This is epistemic violence against Black women.
It
is, in fact, the traditional modus operandi of the elite that record history to
erase and silence the voices women and ordinary people. The euro-patriarchal
elitist approach, not only to the writing of history but also in the honouring
of struggle icons, erases the memories and experiences, and silences the
stories and contributions of ordinary Black women, women activist and women
intellectuals.
We
must understand that this approach to history is fundamentally rooted in
eurocentric ethos. Mohau Pheko writes somewhere that “almost every canonized
western philosopher is on record as viewing women as inferior, incompetent, or
disqualified epistemic or moral agents”. Indeed, European scholars and
philosophers like Aristotle, upon whose ideas today’s democracy is built, were
misogynist.
Aristotle
believed women were inferior to men. For example, in his work ‘Politics’, Aristotle writes that “as regards the sexes, the male is by nature
superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject”.
And in ‘Xenophon’s Symposium’,
Socrates also asserts that woman’s nature is not wise and inferior to men’s.
In
his book, ‘Homosexuality & The
Effeminization Of Afrikan Males’, Dr Mwalimu Baruti also reveals that “beginning with the fathers of stolen
European philosophy, not only were women seen as unfit for the love of men, but
they were also judged as innately inferior and of less social, political,
economic, religious and, therefore, cultural significance and value”.
So ultimately,
histories constructed in euro-patriarchal societies called ‘democracies’ today,
shaped and informed by the dominant eurocentric culture that permeates every
fabric of our being and social existence, must innately eliminate women. These
histories must advertently erase, silence and debase women; her story does not qualify
as history.
In
this way, violence against women, misogyny and patriarchy are perpetually
institutionalized through this erasure of the memory and contributions of women
in socio-economic and political revolutions. Liberation struggles, we are made
to believe, are the products and field of elite ‘great’ men only; as a result,
history, therefore, must necessarily continue to be a male-dominated theatre.
So,
as we honour the memory and commemorate the sacrifices of the youth on 1976, we
must understand that the June 16 generation were heterogeneous and diverse in
many respects. We must acknowledge the critical role played by young Black
women in that Students’ Uprising. Their contributions must be equally
remembered, evoked and celebrated. Otherwise, we continue to institutionalize
violence against women through their erasure from national memory and our
collective consciousness.
