16 June 1976: A protest, a photo, & blood on the hands of the police
Of all the days South Africa wept, this was a day we shed the most tears
Forty four years ago today, an estimated 20 000 school children protested in an uprising in Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa. Students were protesting against being forced to learn all subjects in Afrikaans — the language of their oppressors, the apartheid South African government.
It is said that this photo galvanised the world against the apartheid regime, and put the struggle for freedom onto a success trajectory.
But, do you know the story behind the picture?
In the time of apartheid, most black children were ‘passive’ in their oppression. The adults and young people understood it, and the struggle was underway — but in general, most children under the age of 14 were not really hardened protestors and activists.
That all changed when the apartheid government decreed that the language of ALL schooling would be in Afrikaans, and no longer English.
Antoinette Sithole recalls her 17 year old self, being caught up the night before in the intense rush of fear and anxiety, painting the placards, ironing her uniform, and preparing for the next day. Her 12 year old little brother watched all the preparations, but only secondary/high schools were to protest, so he could not attend with her.
Much like today, the weather was cold, dull, and miserable in Johannesburg, when she headed out to the secret meeting point. The peaceful protest was planned in secret, but the media was alerted to cover it, and Sam Nzima, a then 42 year old photographer for The World newspaper, was covering it.
Nzima arrived at Naledi High School around six in the morning. Students were already preparing their placards, scrawling slogans with thick lines of paint: AWAY WITH AFRIKAANS; AFRIKAANS MUST BE ABOLISHED; WE ARE BEING CERTIFIED BUT NOT EDUCATED.
Even then, Nzima felt a thick sense of foreboding. Few of the children had any experience with the apartheid state, but he had seen plenty of police crackdowns in his work. They never ended peacefully.
“I knew that they would be arrested or be killed. There were no rubber bullets back then. It was live ammunition. When they pull out the gun, you must know that you are dead.” Time Magazine, 15 June 2016
“When we arrived at Pafeneng there was confusion. There were police. They threw us with tear gas. We ran away and we hid ourselves. While we were hiding we found the police, they were on the other side Andy Thomas Hall and then we went out. While we were still standing outside there was someone coming in front of the school, and who is this person? And I thought this is Hector. I called Hector. I said to Hector he should not, and we go back home.
There was a gun sound. There was teargas and there was confusion. I saw people hiding themselves and then I hid myself too. While we were standing there I then — I was afraid because I didn’t know where Hector has gone to and people were holding something. And then I moved forward and I could not see properly, and I saw Hector’s shoe.
Mr Makubu said and ran. While he was running I asked where are you going. He said there’s a clinic just nearby. While we were running someone stopped in front of us, this car, my mother came out from the car and she said put him inside the car, I will assist you. Mr Makubu was carrying Hector and said Hector is dead.” ~Excerpt from transcript, Day 1, Truth & Reconciliation Commission, 22 July 1997 — Witness no. 1, Antoinette Sithole
“I think now that we were marching, most of the schoolchildren, we only went to the secondary schools and high schools, so maybe because of curiosity kids from all these lower primary schools they all followed us.
He was 12 years old and he was to be 13 in August.”
It would be 2 years later that Antoinette would know the name of the young man in the picture with her, who had tried to save her brother. Mbuyisa Makhubo had already finished school, so he was not part of the protest, but when he heard the gunfire, he ran towards the protest, “Mama, they are killing the kids,” the 18 year old shouted, his sister Gwendolyn Nontsikelelo, recalls.
“I did not expect to see a 13-year-old boy being shot by the police.” Sam Nzima said. “So many were injured. So many were killed. But Hector Pieterson was the first I saw.” Nzima knew the photos were good, but he also knew he would be singled out by the police for photographing the violence. So he rewound the film mid-roll and stuffed it in his sock. He started on a fresh roll, as enraged students turned on the police. ” When other officers saw that Nzima was still taking pictures, they forced him to open up all his cameras. “All the films were exposed,” Nzima told Time Magazine
The film in his sock was not exposed though.
The film in his sock held the picture that would strengthen the mobilisation of international opinion against apartheid. This picture and the people in the picture would become a potent symbol that galvanized millions to vilify the ongoing crimes against humanity in South Africa.
You could say that this picture had a similar effect to the video of George Floyd with a policeman’s knee on his neck, which catalysed a global movement that is currently galvanising millions against racism — 44 years on!
The Hector Pieterson photo would go on to be a symbol of the struggle that ended politically in 1994, but it also changed the lives of Nzima and Makhubo forever. Makhubo slipped into deep depression after the uprising which lasted for days in Soweto, and one day he just left. He called home from Botswana once, and then sent a letter from Nigeria in 1978, saying he was planning to walk to Jamaica, making them believe he was mentally unstable. His family never heard from him again. When his mother died in 2004, he was still missing. He would be 62 years old today.
Nzima became a target for the police, “Wherever you find Sam taking pictures, shoot at him, kill him. Then you come and fill the forms here that it was a stray bullet.” He resigned from The World, and never took another photo after the newspaper offices were raided and shut down.
Sam Nzima with the Pentax camera that he took the famous picture with.
When interviewed by Time Magazine in 2016, he said:
“That picture destroyed my future in journalism. I regretted that I took the picture at that time, because I was compelled to leave my job. Now I say people are free in South Africa because of the contribution that I’ve done by this picture.”
An excerpt from the 1997 TRC transcript of Sam Nzima’s statement about the events of June 16th, 1976:
“MS SOOKA: Do you think that the police were prepared, in a sense, to deal with this march?
MR NZIMA: Yes they were prepared to deal with this march, because that was my first time to see the casper which we called a hippo. We did not know when did they get this big vehicle to come and shoot at the students at that time. It was immediately after Hector Petersen was shot down, we saw a big convoy of caspers coming to Soweto and everybody was teargassed at the place where the shooting took place.
MS SOOKA: When the policeman who was in charge gave the order to fire, besides giving the students a warning to disperse did he not attempt to use any other methods of getting them to disperse, for instance by using teargas or rubber bullets, or was the first instruction simply for them to disperse and in the next few minutes the order came to shoot?
MR NZIMA: Nothing else was used except the live ammunition which was used to shoot the student direct and they did not shoot in the air, they shot direct to the students. I was there, I saw it.
MS SOOKA: In your opinion the shooting was meant to kill?
MR NZIMA: Correct, it was meant to kill.”
Sam Nzima passed away on 12 May 2018.
“The number of people who died is usually given as 176 with estimates up to 700. The original government figure claimed only 23 students were killed; the number of wounded was estimated to be over a thousand people.” Wikipedia.
In contemporary South Africa, on 16 June 2020, the struggles of the youth and children exist in various ways. As the world grapples with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been growing numbers of online protests and angry calls for government to take a serious stand on femicide and gender based violence, as the number of young women and girls who are victims of vliolence, abuse, rape, and murder are critically high. We await government’s response to the horrific deaths of these young women.
South Africa’s youth are 37% of the total population of our country, and their futures are not as bright as we would have hoped it would be, 26 years into democracy, and 44 years after Hastings Ndlovu, Hector Pieterson and many others died.
We live in hope that one day, when we commemorate June 16th, it will be a celebration of the bright future of South Africa’s youth>
References:Truth & Reconciliation Commission; Time Magazine; Wikipedia; NGO Pulse; Hector Pieterson museum; UCT
