CRIMES OF APARTHEID: SOWETO STUDENT MASSACRE

Today marks 100 years since Afrikaans was recognised as an official language of South Africa - on 8 May 1925.

The Afrikaans language began developing around 1616-52, when ships bearing European settlers, mainly Dutch, arrived at the Cape. Their interactions with the indigenous African people in South Africa gradually led to the development of what became known as the language of the oppressor: it was the colonial Afrikaner White community that would introduce apartheid, a system of segregation based on race that marginalised Black people.

In 1976, an attempt by apartheid authorities to make Afrikaans the medium of instruction in Black schools sparked student protests, which led to the Soweto Massacre. Police officers fired live ammunition at the peacefully marching students. A government commission in 1980 concluded that 575 people had been k*lled and 3,907 wounded, but the official count still stands at 176 massacred.

Afrikaans is spoken by 6.5-million South Africans, 40% of whom are White, according to a 2011 census. However, language is not the only visible impact of settler colonialism on the country. South Africa has the dubious distinction of being the world’s most unequal country, with 5% of (mainly White) South Africans owning 85% of the country’s wealth, while over 50% (most of whom are Black) own less than 1% of the wealth.

One still painful aspect of the Soweto massacre is that, like many other apartheid-era atrocities, the perpetrators were never brought to justice.

As the centennial remembrance occurs, we salute our brave heroes who fell for the right to a better education within a racist settler colonial system.

Sources

https://iol.co.za/news/politics/2025-05-08-100-years-of-afrikaans-a-language-of-diversity-and-complexity/

https://archive.ph/yucaM

https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/afrikaans-is-officially-a-gogo-now-a-full100-years/

https://www.fairplanet.org/story/anger-as-south-african-court-restores-language-of-the-oppressor-at-largest-university/

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/soweto-uprising/

https://time.com/6087699/south-africa-wealth-gap-unchanged-since-apartheid/

https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/51977/south-africas-unanswered-land-question

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/soweto-riots-the-day-our-children-lost-faith-africa-media-online/rgXRWni4ZpOiLA?hl=en

https://www.britannica.com/event/Soweto-uprising

https://evrimagaci.org/tpg/afrikaans-celebrates-100-years-as-official-language-346950?srsltid=AfmBOopZaWld7y2Wgs9dfH-GfdBqlccc3vwdFH9HwQkW-nHArDdfZF8E