16/06/2021
17th Guild News
Today in History:African Child
The Day of the African Child has been celebrated on June 16 every year since 1991, when it was first initiated by the OAU Organisation of African Unity. It honors those who participated in the Soweto Uprising in 1976 on that day.
🧒🏿The Soweto Uprising began as a protest by thousands, mostly students, against the government's insistence that the Afrikaans language—a language of the white minority that ruled South Africa—be used as the medium of instruction in Soweto's high schools, which served black Africans.
Punt Janson, the Deputy Minister of Bantu Education, was quoted as saying: "A Black man may be trained to work on a farm or in a factory. He may work for an employer who is either English-speaking or Afrikaans-speaking and the man who has to give him instructions may be either English-speaking or Afrikaans-speaking. Why should we now start quarrelling about the medium of instruction among the Black people as well?... No, I have not consulted them and I am not going to consult them. I have consulted the Constitution of the Republic of SouthAfrica.
_The resentment grew until 30 April 1976, when children at Orlando West Junior School in Soweto went on strike and refused to go to school_
*A student from Morris Isaacson High School, Teboho "Tsietsi" Mashinini, proposed a meeting on 13 June 1976 to discuss what should be done. Students formed an Action Committee, later known as the Soweto Students' Representative Council*
*It was what sparked off the Soweto Uprising*
Cc. *PAN AFRICAN CHILD FOUDATION*