What did the young teenagers of Soweto most desire on that day ?
What were their collective heart longing on THAT day..
June 16th, 1976!
I live with a home full of teenagers and pre- teens. I love spending time with them just chatting. It is interesting sharing this part of our South African experience with them - its joys, frustrations and heartaches. The broken reality in which our children are growing up in modern, post-Apartheid South Africa is a far cry from the devastating experience of young people 40 years ago.
We have enormous obstacles to navigate as a country still divided by wealth, culture and language and indeed colour.
And yet, if we dare to take an honest look back to those "40 years ago days", we will find a nation at war with itself in a very different way.
There is something particularly evil with a government that rules its people with tyranny.
It was a very, very different South Africa in 1976.
On this day, 40 years ago, black teenagers decided to do something that would change their course and indeed the whole course of our country. They decided to stand up and say NO!
Full of courage and unity and hope, they set off on their protest.
They were met with the full force o and brutality of the governments evil who did not hold back in killing again, even killing children.
Many people joined the protests that spanned the days that followed. Soweto was locked down. No one knows how many people died but 176 is the number given. ( it is thought to be closer to 800)
Today we look back and remember their bravery- for it is a very, very brave thing to stand up in the face of violence and death.
We look back and say salute that youth of 1976. I was a little girl of 6 on that day. White South Africans carried on with life as if nothing was happening. We were "shielded" from the hell that was.
But I would hope that we would also look forward
with a greater vision.
I pray we would somehow find a common purpose to build a new and better South Africa.
Lets pull up our sleeves and each of us do what we can to build into the youth of today so that we can have a just South Africa for tomorrow.
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