1956 A sign common in Johannesburg. IMAGE: THREE LIONS/GETTY IMAGES

While Grand Apartheid was responsible for demarcating separate Homelands within South Africa, Petty Apartheid began with the 1949 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages. This was followed by 1950’s Immorality Amendment, which outlawed “unlawful racial intercourse” or “any immoral or indecent act” between the races.

The core of the Apartheid system was the division of people into racial groups using a complex and trivial series of tests. The result was the classification of the population into one of four groups: White, Black, Indian and Colored, with Colored and Indian groups further subdivided. (The group names are capitalised here to indicate their use under Apartheid.)

The tests were primarily based on appearance — skin color, facial features, appearance of head (and other) hair. Most infamously, the “pencil test” decreed that if an individual could hold a pencil in their hair when they shook their head, they could not be classified as White. The tests were so imprecise that members of an extended family could be classified in different racial groups.

Every year people were reclassified. In 1984, for example, 518 Colored people were defined as White, two Whites were called Chinese, one White was reclassified as Indian, one White became Colored and 89 Colored people became Black.

For political, diplomatic and economic reasons, certain groups and their descendants, including Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean immigrants, were classified as “honorary White.” Only the White group could live free of any restrictions. All other racial groups suffered the laws of Petty Apartheid.

1952 A woman sat in the wagon reserved for White people to protest against Apartheid. IMAGE: KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GETTY IMAGES

As these signs showed, the restrictions intruded into all aspects of life. While Colored and Indian groups had access to some privileges, the sharpest distinction was between Black and White. The 1953 Separate Amenities Act of 1953 stated that separate facilities no longer had to be “substantially equal.”

The result: Black-only bus stops serviced inferior Black-only buses. Black-only ambulances stopped at inferior Black-only hospitals. Black-only education was provided at inferior Black-only schools and universities. Beaches, bridges, swimming pools, washrooms, cinemas, benches, parks and even burial grounds were all segregated.

There were a handful of places where segregation didn’t occur, notably drug-dealing nightclubs and churches. Though the lack of segregation in churches was not for want of trying. Blacks could not attend White churches under the 1957 Churches Native Laws Amendment Act, but the law was largely unenforced.

South African President P.W. Botha began to tear down Petty Apartheid in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But while the outward — and literal — signs of Apartheid started to be removed under Botha, the level of brutality against Blacks increased. Following the end of the Apartheid system in 1994, Botha was found responsible for gross violations of human rights under the nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He maintained he had no regrets.

1956 White children paddling in a pond marked by a sign reading “For European Children Only.” IMAGE: THREE LIONS/GETTY IMAGES

Apartheid cannot be reformed; it has to be eliminated.

OLOF PALME, SWEDEN’S PRIME MINISTER, FEBRUARY 1986. A WEEK LATER HE WAS MURDERED.

c. 1955 Signs in English and Afrikaans, in Wellington railway station, South Africa, enforcing the policy of apartheid or racial segregation. IMAGE: EVANS/THREE LIONS/GETTY IMAGES

1957 Signs in both English and Afrikaans in Johannesburg. IMAGE: ULLSTEIN BILD/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES

1960 A bench in Albert Park, Durban. GREY VILLET/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

1960s A park for Non-European women. IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES

1967 A Taxi rank for white people. IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES

1971 A sign outside a park restricts its use to ‘European mothers with babies in arms’. IMAGE: MR HEWISON/KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES

1974 An apartheid notice on a beach near Cape Town. IMAGE: KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES

1976 An apartheid notice on a beach near Cape Town. IMAGE: KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES

1978 A rail wagon with the words ‘Non-Whites’. IMAGE: LEHNARTZ / ULLSTEIN IMAGE VIA GETTY IMAGES

1982 A railway carriage reserved for white people only. IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES

1986 Toilets restricted to use by “Black, Coloreds & Asians” at a bus station. IMAGE: WILLIAM F. CAMPBELL/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

I don’t care what they remember about me. I led South Africa on the right path.

1986 Whites only sign in foreground at restricted beach, with bathers in background. IMAGE: WILLIAM F. CAMPBELL/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

I apologise in my capacity as leader of the NP to the millions who suffered wrenching disruption of forced removals; who suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination.

1988 A sign reading ‘Bathing area for Whites Only’ on a beach at Victoria Bay, Western Cape. IMAGE: SUSAN WINTERS COOK/GETTY IMAGES

I Saw a Nightmare – Chapter 2
“I Heard There Was a Riot in Soweto…:” A Narrative of June 16, 1976

We have Soweto with us.
—Carol Hermer, The Diary of Maria Tholo

A Winter Morning

Warnings

It all began on a winter morning in June. The air was cold and heavy with the smoke of the last night’s coal fires, the weak winter sun still ineffective against the morning chill which stubbornly clung to the shadows and the stony ground. Parents had long since made their way through the line snaking across the open ground, waiting for the green Putco busses to take them into the “sheer massiveness of the concrete city … so intimidating, so immovable and so impressive,” carrying what they needed for the day in paper bags or the occasional briefcase. Others braced themselves for the crowded platforms at Dube station, Mzimhlope, or New Canada or huddled with their fellow workers on the back of an open-bed truck on their way to work, gathering their tan second-hand military overcoats around them, drawing their woolen caps deeper into their faces against the morning cold.

At the Morris Isaacson High School in Central Western Jabavu, a simple sign hung at the gate: “No SBs [security branch police] Allowed. Enter at your own risk.” At another high school in Phefeni township the word Asingeni (we will not enter) was painted on the doors.

For several weeks already, schoolchildren at a number of schools had been staying away from classes to protest the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools:

It’s only a matter of time before we get organised. We talk about this every day. Here in the township and at work. We talk in our own language and the whites don’t understand what we say.

Now the children were resolved to make a public stand, organizing a march and a one-day boycott of classes to pledge solidarity with other schools affected by the enforcement of the Afrikaans ruling and to bring pressure to bear on the authorities to listen to the students’ complaints:

In Naledi that evening, a curious conversation took place between Lilli Mokganyetsi and her brother, who had already graduated from high school and was waiting “for a call to the university”:

When I arrived at home, he said, are you going to demonstrate tomorrow? I said, What is “demonstration,” I don’t know, what are you talking about [laughs] … I’m sorry? No, he said, no, are you going to go about with placards? What is a ‘placard,’ then? [brother:] Poster. What is a “poster”? [laughs] You know I couldn’t just understand … anything, let alone demonstration on its own. [brother:] No man, I have heard that students will be demonstrating tomorrow against this Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. I wonder what’s going to happen. And I said, no, what are you talking about, do you mean we are not going to school? He said, no, man, you’ve got to go to school. You go to your school, they will show you how to “demonstrate.” You don’t understand, you!

The night before June 16 “was a night where we spent preparing ourselves for the march.” There was no “grand plan that extended for days and for months,” although considerable, if hasty, planning had gone into the preparation for it. Murphy Morobe was among the student leaders who created the placards for the march. The placards read simply “Away with Afrikaans” and “Down with BantuEducation.” They saw themselves “on this day” marching from different points in Soweto toward Orlando West, to one of the junior secondary schools that had been longest in boycotting classes around the Afrikaans issue.

The idea was that we would be marching towards that point as a way in which we are going to pledge our solidarity with that secondary school and thereafter in fact we are going to look towards the situation where we would anticipate and expect a response from the authorities in terms of our demands that we are going to place on that day. And the idea was, that subsequent to that we are going to have a mass rally, where the student leaders, Tsietsi Mashinini and them, would be able to address the students and thereafter in fact break off the march.

The March

[T]he march would start in Naledi for all those schools in that area and … Naledi High School would lead them from that point of departure. That column of the march would then come down to Morris Isaacson High School, collecting all the students on the way. The schools in the Meadowlands area would come along and join up with the other Morris Isaacson column at Orlando West High School. They would then proceed as a main column to Orlando Stadium which was going to be their destination… schools in the Orlando East complex would culminate with the others at Orlando Stadium.

At Naledi High students streamed out of their classrooms when the bell rang for morning assembly. From under their clothes they pulled posters and placards—”The Black Nation Is Not a Place for Impurities. Afrikaans Stinks”—and as they moved toward the gates of the school their voices gathered force: “Power! Away with Afrikaans” and “Free Azania, power! At their head Tebello Motapanyane urged them forward, stopping only briefly to warn a white press photographer that pictures would get them into trouble with the police. The students poured out onto Nyakale Street and marched toward the Thomas Mofolo Junior Secondary School a mile away in Naledi, where 500 students had already gathered for a meeting at 7:30 that morning.

[W]hat they were singing was the anthem, that is Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika. […]

The other song they were singing, is an English song, “We shall overcome.”

Outside one schoolyard a big crowd of students waved placards (“Afrikaans Is a Poison”) and sang (“Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika” [God bless Africa] and “MorenaVuluka“). Another group of students, from the Morris Isaacson High School, joined them. As the students moved through Mofolo toward Dube they were joined by others from schools along the road, and their numbers swelled. Younger schoolchildren cheered and watched from the side of the road. Others joined the march.

Lilli had “even forgotten” what her brother had said the night before. She prepared herself as usual and then went to her school, a secondary school in Tladi, bracing herself for the mathematics examination she was to take. But the exam was interrupted by the arrival of the students leading the march:

[T]he school was arranged in this fashion [she demonstrates]…

[HP-M: Like a horseshoe? …]

Ja, this is the administration, classes, classes and this is the square, where we hold our morning devotions. So now they came this way, and our class was here. So we came in, and joined them in the assembly there. We, of course toyi-toyed, but we never knew of toyi-toyi then [laughs]. And then, suddenly when they were to move out, we thought we were supposed to remain [laughs] … you know, because I still remember I was … , I just remained behind, thinking that everything is over now. But the teachers, principals, they were also, you know, everybody was just frightened. And then, when I was remaining behind like this, I had a boyfriend, a long-time boyfriend, he was residing in the very same street with us, but now they had moved to Orangefontein. And he was attending a certain secondary [school] in Naledi. So he saw me, he grabbed me with the hand: ‘Come Lilli, come, let’s go.

At the Thesele Secondary School in White City, another neighborhood of Soweto, at about 8 a.m. Antoinette Musi joined the other girls in her school for morning prayers.

Whilst praying, I heard a noise as though it was that of an aeroplane. Thereafter I saw a group of children carrying placards. Because we knew nothing, they came with placards singing. We then moved backwards. They then asked us to join them and we were surprised why we should join them. Some of the schoolchildren refused to join this group of children. They then forced us to join them. The principal got out of his office and told us not to join that group. They then terrified the principal; he immediately ran into his office. We then joined the group and moved away with them.

The children, boys and girls, were singing and talking loudly among themselves and, although they “promised to assault us too,” Antoinette Musi remembered that they “looked happy.” She “was surprised” and “did not know exactly what to do” but left her school with the others and went to Itshetsepeng School, where they “found the schoolchildren there already outside. They also joined us.” By this time the crowd of schoolchildren had grown so large that their very numbers and enthusiasm induced others to join them.16 Another 15-year-old student said, “We were at a good school, a good high school. We liked our teachers and we studied hard. But when the word went out, we knew we had to join the rest.”

While they were marching the children lifted their fists in the air, and any cars they came upon were stopped. It was mostly boys who did this—”they would lift up their hands with their fists and command the driver of the car to also do the same sign.” Some did and were allowed to pass; others did not.

But Antoinette did not see anyone being assaulted or anything happening to their cars. Philippa Newlin Thompson, vice chairman of the African Self-Help Association, encountered such a group of students around 9:30 A.M. while visiting some of the construction work being done on four-day nurseries (preschools) of the Association. She was driving from Senaoane on the main road, which ran past the building of the Urban Bantu Council, when

I met a demonstration by hundreds of children marching towards Molapo. The children were all good humouredand obviously enjoying their demonstration. A boy of about 15 or 16 took it upon himself to guide my car slowly through the oncoming children, but after a few minutes when the wave of children seemed endless, he suggested I drive onto the parking area of a garage at Moletsane outside which I had then arrived. This I did. The children continued to march past waving banners about the abolition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. After a further 5 or 10 minutes a rather older youth came up to me and said “You must go that way” (indicating a side road) “and that is an order.” As I was beginning to be concerned about the 10 am start of our meeting, I didn’thesitate, and found my way through Tladi and back onto the road.

The Central Western Jabavu office of the West Rand Administration Board was on Mphuthi Street. Samuel S. Tlotleng’s duties as a social worker included his assisting young people (“the youth”) with their “reference book problems,” writing affidavits for them, and referring them to the department to which they should direct their complaints. He had heard “children speaking” the day before the uprising, “saying that they were going to have a march … into Orlando stadium where they are going to have a meeting … in protest of being taught in the medium of Afrikaans.” He reported to work as usual on the morning of June 16, at eight o’clock, and saw many children on their way to school. About an hour later “they came down marching, they came down Maputi Street.” There were about a hundred of them carrying placards, singing freedom songs, and holding up their clenched fists in the “power salute.” At the offices of the West Rand Bantu Administration the staff, including Mr. Hobkirk, who was white and who dealt with those youth seeking work permits, were all standing on the stoep (porch) and watching the march go by. Although the marchers saw Mr. Hobkirk, “[t]hey just raised their clenched fists, shouting ‘power'” in English, and continued on their “orderly” way. The employees of the West Rand Administration Board “just went back to [their] normal duties.”

By the time the schoolchildren reached Orlando High School “we were all mixed 25 up, different uniforms … we were all together,” and Antoinette Musi did not “see anybody leading.” 21 A male student stopped and addressed the students before they marched on to gather in front of the closed gates of Orlando West High School. He said:

Brothers and sisters, I appeal to you to keep calm and cool. We have just received a report that the police are coming. Please do not taunt them, do not do anything to them, just be cool and calm because we do not know what they are after. We are not fighting.

The Confrontation

By 10:30 A.M. several thousand students had gathered on the stone-topped knoll near the Orlando West High School, on the school grounds and among the houses in the neighborhood.

Where this school is situated you can actually see the Orlando Police Station across the railroad there.

The geography of the uprising is quite striking, in particular how the sites for police stations were clearly chosen to provide the police with a vantage point from which to literally and figuratively oversee the township. The view here is from the barred hallway window of Orlando Police Station across the valley toward the flat roofs of Phefeni Junior Secondary School and Vilakazi Street.

Witnesses said that there must have been between 5,000 and 6,000 children,24 most of them students from Naledi High School, Morris Isaacson High School, Orlando West High School, Orlando North Junior Secondary School, Empangeni Higher Primary School, Themba Sizwe Higher Primary School, and Thesele Secondary School. Lieutenant Colonel Kleingeld appealed to the students to disperse, first in Afrikaans and then even in broken Zulu. But the students “had grievances which could no longer wait.” Their clenched fists held high, they surged forward, shouting “Amandla!” (power), “Inkululeko ngoku!” (freedom in our lifetime), and “One Azania, one nation!” One of their leaders, Hastings Ndlovu, urged them on.

“The air resounded with menace” and, defiantly, they sang:
Asikhathali noma bes’bopha
We don’t give a damn, even if imprisoned. Sizimisel’ikululeko. For Freedom is our ultimate goal.

Their placards were simple, made from flattened cardboard boxes, held an arm’s length high or simply tied around their bodies with string. But their language was incendiary: “Black Power, We Want Vorster Soon,” “Voster (sic) and Kruger must go to Hell,” “Black Power, Free Mandela.” Later they would rip chalkboards off school walls. They cut along three sides of the canvas bags, bags in which their mothers carried mieliemeel (corn flour) into the township, and wrote on the inside. One read, “We are being fed the crumbs of ignorance with Afrikaans as a dangerous spoon.” Others read, “Away with Afrikaans,” “We do not want Afrikaans in Azania,” and “Afrikaans is a language of the oppressors.”

The story of the events that followed remains “beyond the reach of that kind of morality that normally distinguishes truth from lie.” Although the versions of this story are so numerous and so varied that they give the illusion of detail and accuracy, they become impossible here to parse out and it will forever remain difficult, perhaps impossible, to re-collect “what really happened.”

Perhaps the most descriptive and harrowing account of the confrontation, at least from the point of view of the police, was that of Sergeant Marthinus Johannes Hattingh. From his vantage point in Khumalo Street he watched the children (kinders) milling about among the houses for about thirty minutes. He heard the children screaming, but could not understand what they were saying. They moved back to the school grounds of Orlando West High School, and the police followed them into Vilakazi Street. Slowly the crowd (skare) moved toward them. Lieutenant Colonel Kleingeld gave orders to get dogs and himself took up a position at the front of the police contingent:

A Black police officer stepped up next to Kleingeld, and Hattingh saw that they both spoke to the crowds, “albei praat met die skare.” But the air was filled with so much noise that he could not hear what they said. Under the circumstances, it is likely that none of the children heard them either. Murphy Morobe said “there was no visible … there was no clear communication between the police and the students in terms of what in fact they were expecting us to do.”

In the middle of the street leading up to Maponya stores, the police came in the Landrover and blocked the street. But we were prepared to go past the police and stage the march and come back to our school. And the police said ‘No, you people are not going to go past us.’ That is when exactly the trouble started…

Kleingeld gave the order to use tear gas, and several canisters were thrown at the crowd. Tear gas had not been used in the townships for many years, and for the students it was the first of many encounters to come.

And the teargas canister shot going off… For many people it may be teargas—but it could be, it could be real live ammunition going off.

Undoubtedly, many students associated the sounds of shooting with the frightening sensation of the biting tear gas, closely identifying one with the other:

The police, … of course they were throwing us with teargas, teargas, and they started shooting. Not from this group that was in Phefeni. When they came from their various police stations, or from their various directions, they were shooting other students, I don’t know from where. And then they started shooting at us. And then, you know, that was the first time that you would hear the sound of a gun, like, for instance, I wasn’t there when the teargas was shot, was fired at people on Enos’s day. That was the very first time that I could hear the shooting of a teargas, and the gunshot of course. You know, we were … aie … it was so nice of course … [to] run away … but you only feel the pain when they teargas one… Maybe you were, [hesitates] what can I say, to say when the tear-gas was being shot, … burned, … well, it burns in the eyes and in the nose, and all those. (Lilli Mokganyetsi Interview)

Some of the grenades were thrown back at the police; the crowd moved ever nearer and continued to throw stones at the police. Not all of the tear-gas grenades exploded, but it was not clear why not all the grenades worked.

The tear-gas attack failed to disperse the students, and what even the official Cillié Commission called an “inept and ineffective attack” merely stiffened their resolve. The students moved forward. But the police tried one more thing. When the students were about 30 meters away, Colonel Kleingeld gave the command to storm the crowd with the dogs in the front.

With the lucidity that fear can impart, Hattingh described the details of what he saw:

Ek het toe gevind dat patrolliehond CHEROKEE dood lê in die straat voor huis nr. 7294, Vilakazistraat. Daar het nog rook uit hom getrek en hy was verbrand. Daar was tekens dat hy doodgekap was. Dit is die hond van Bantoekonstabel Mamihano. I found that patrol dog Cherokee lay dead in the road in front of house no. 7294, Vilakazi Street. Smoke still rose from him and he was burned. There were signs that he had been hacked to death. It was the dog of Bantu Constable Mamihano.

Another police officer had seen what had happened to the dog during that first police charge:

‘n Swart polisiehond het by my verby gesnel en een van die Bantoe seuns oorrompel. Die skare het omgedraai om hul makker te help en die hond met klippe bestook. A black police dog whipped past me and overwhelmed one of the Bantu boys. The crowd turned around to help their friend and pelted the dog with stones.

Justice Mamiane, who was the dog’s handler, feared for his life:

Ek het nou gedink ons gaan dood gegooi word… Ons het almal op die skare afgestorm. My hond was aan ‘n lang tou en ons het gestorm. Ek onthou dat hy ‘n paar mense gebyt het. Hy was toe vêr van my ek sou sê 40 meter. Ek merk toe dat ‘n aantal besig was om hom met stene te kap en met kieries te slaan. Ek het die tou getrek om hom terug te kry, maar van die skare het die tou vasgehou. As gevolg van die storm het die skare terug geval tot die hoek van Moema en Vilakazistrate waar hulle toe weer stelling ingeneem het. Die skare het my hond saamgesleep en aan die brand gesteek. Toe ek my hond sien was hy platgetrap. I now thought we would be stoned to death. We charged the crowd. My dog was on a long leash and we charged the crowd. I remember that he bit a few people. He was then far from me, I would say 40 meters. I realized then that a number were busy hitting him with stones and with knobkieries. I pulled the lead to get him back but some in the crowd held on to the lead. As a result of the charge, the crowds fell back to the corner of Moema and Vilakazi Streets where they then made a stand again. The crowd dragged my dog along and set him on fire. When I saw my dog he had been trampled under foot.

Snarling and biting, the dog caused “a great deal of panic amongst the students. It was either them or the dog at that point in time.” The crowds fell back to the corner of Moema and Vilakazi Streets and, for a moment, the police retreated to their vehicles.

The Shooting

Until then, no one had been hurt. But after about five minutes the children once again surged forward, throwing more stones.

Stones on road.

They hurled, together with the stones, offensive language at the police: “hoerkinders” (whore children), “Vorster pigs,” “wit varke” (white pigs).42 The police again stormed the crowd, and this time stones hailed on them from all sides. They retreated to their vehicles, which were also being hit by stones. The attack had become more fierce, and to Sergeant Hattingh it was clear that the crowds would overwhelm them.

Ek het gesien dat ‘n Bantoe sersant teen die kop getref word en geweldig bloei aan die regterkant van sy kop. ‘n Klip het my getref teen die regterknie. My been het onder my ingevou en teen die pad neergeval. Ek kon nie op my been staan nie. Met die het ek ‘n bevel gehoor “TREK VUURWAPENS EN VUUR!” Ek het gesien luit.-kol. Kleingeld vuur ‘n sarsie na die regterkant van die skare en ander lede het ook gevuur. Ek self het opgestaan, my vuurwapen getrek.

I saw that a Bantu sergeant was hit against the head and that he bled heavily on the right side of his head. A stone hit me against my right knee. My leg buckled under me and fell down on the road. I could not stand on my leg. With that I heard a command: “DRAW WEAPONS AND SHOOT.” I saw Colonel Kleingeld fire a round at the right-hand side of the crowd and other members [of the police] also fired. I stood up myself, drew my weapon.

Something was about to transform what had been an impassioned and raucous student march into a catastrophe of outrage, panic, and deadly assault.

“At that point … the stone throwing began at the police, and live ammunition was actually used,” according to Morobe. Tema stated, “Then I saw two or three in the front row who had stones and they hurled them at the police”

Then one of the police who was on the extreme right, he was in uniform and it was a White policeman, pulled out a revolver and he pointed it to the students who were more towards the right…

He aimed at the students. At that time Stanley, our driver, screamed and said: Look at him, he is shooting at the kids!

In February 1977, 21-year-old Murphy Morobe testified before the Cillié Commission and told his story of what had happened:

On the 16th June, 1976, I left my home for school at 7 a.m. and got to school at about 8:15 a.m. I was delayed by transport and had my placard with me, with words “Away with Afrikaans”. I had made it on my own. On arrival I found that the students had already left the school premises and I managed to trace them in the direction of Tifile Secondary School. I joined the procession and moved on towards White City and met pupils from neighbouring schools and moved on towards Mavulo, that is on the road to Dube.

We moved past Dube towards Orlando West and there were no incidents nor police interference till we came to Orlando West. Before we reached Orlando West High School we were stopped by Mashinini who informed us that he has got the word that police are in the vicinity and said that there is no turning back, we have just got to go on and there was a roar of approval. The students were singing all along route Nkosi Sikalele Afrika.

The demonstration moved towards Orlando West High School and here there were also other students waiting for our arrival. On joining them I went into Orlando West High School premises to inform the students here that the others were waiting for them. I told the students who were outside the classes to come and join and they did join others. Outside the school premises I was unable to leave through the gate as the teargas had been fired by police before I could get out. The alternative route I could get was to scale the school fence and then join the other students, which I did.

By the time I joined the students, I found them throwing stones at the police outside Orlando West High School and I also joined the students in throwing stones at the police. The police were moving down into the mob and the students then scattered.

Sixteen years later, Morobe, remembered “as the police were moving out of the area, that’s when some of them started shooting directly into the crowd at quite close range, and it’s at that point that Hector Pieterson was shot and killed.” Victor Dladla lived behind the school where the shooting took place. He saw the police twice try to stop the procession but then one policeman “took out his gun and shot a boy who fell.” Dladla remembered he thought immediately that the boy was dead and that it was “at that moment” when “the children spread and picked up stones. They started throwing stones at the police.”

Antoinette Musi had seen the police convoy and hidden in one of the houses nearby. She saw her brother, a thirteen-year-old student at the Ishetsepeng Higher Primary School, emerging from around a corner and called to him. “I then asked him not to go away but stand in front of me,” where she could keep an eye on him. He was there for a short while but then she could not see him anymore.

A tall thin “Bantoeman” holding a brick in his left hand and a “kierie” (club) in the other, rushed at Hattingh. He shot directly at him “om die aanval af te weer” (to defend against the attack). The man fell to the ground.

According to the police, Hastings Ndlovu was an “opstoker” (agitator), armed with a stick and a brick:

Hy het geskree en baie ander het saam gepraat en geskreeu, maar omdat ek nie Bantoetale magtig is nie, kon ek nie verstaan wat gesê word nie.

He shouted and many others shouted and spoke together with him, but because I have no command of African languages, I could not understand what was said.48

What’s this?

Twenty years later, Hasting Ndlovu’s father testified before the Truth Commission:

When I came home in the late afternoon after buying … The World, I realised that one of my sons had been killed. The following day … I went to Baragwaneth. I found my very son, … he had been killed, brought in and when he was taken to the ICU, he died… Went to the mortuary where there were hundreds of bodies strewn all over the place. I have never seen such an incident before. On that day, that is the 17th I could not trace my son.

I came back home. Tried again the Friday, again I failed. Collected the school principal, we went together with a neighbour. Right at the entrance my neighbour said here is this fellow. He was face down, I held him by the ear, turned him over and I said, oh thou fallen piece of earth. Those that have done this deed shall be very sorry. So I realised, yes, it was Hastings Ndlovu, my son, that had died…

We say, bravo to those kids. We hope the organisers of this June 16 should really carry on with this lest the future generations forget.

Hattingh shot five more times “na die bene van die aanstormende skare” (at the legs of the onrushing crowds), but he did not see anyone else fall. The command came to withdraw to an open space where there were fewer houses. The children had retreated completely and the order was given to take the vehicles out of the area. Hattingh’s lack of foresight betrayed him: He had left the keys to his vangwa (a small van commonly used to transport arrested suspects) in the ignition, and they and a wallet and pen had been removed.

Hattingh rolled his van down the hill and left into Moema Street, where it came to a standstill in front of house No. 7334. A new group immediately fell upon him from all sides and bombarded his car with stones. The windows as well as the metalwork were damaged. Someone tried to pull him from the vehicle, grabbing his cap and tearing off his rank insignia. Another person struck him across his right hand with a sharp object, cutting his middle and index fingers. Stones hit him in the car and someone tried to take his gun away from him. In response to his calls for help on the two-way radio, several police cars appeared out of the direction of Khumalo Street. The attack stopped. He noticed that there were three “Bantoekonstabel,” whom he did not know in the back of the van. When he opened the back for them, he could smell “parafin,” a commonly used lamp oil, in the back. The three constables “het uitmekaar gehardloop en [ek het hulle] nog nie weer gesien nie” (ran in different directions and I did not see them again). After hot-wiring the van, Hattingh returned to the Orlando police station alone. He was suffering from shock.

Back in front of the school, Antoinette Musi was searching for her brother but could not find him:

I stood there amazed. Thereafter I saw a group of young boys coming along. It was then that I realised that Hector was being carried by these boys.

Mbuyisa Makhubu, a tall boy wearing a “tattered, sullied overall,” carried the boy in his arms. He wanted to go to the Phefeni Clinic nearby, but Sophie Tema, the reporter from the Rand Daily Mail, stopped them and urged the driver of her Volkswagen Beetle to take the child to the hospital. Their faces mirrored the anguish of the moment.

[W]e saw a boy who had an overall on, carrying another boy in his arms and a girl next to him. She was crying, weeping, and they were coming towards us.

She asked Stanley to stop the car and ordered the little group into it to rush the child to hospital. She herself “followed them on foot to the clinic, which was not very far.” But when she got there, the doctors who had tried to examine the boy “told us that he was dead already”:

The little girl … was present, she was crying… [T]he boy who was carrying this other one, he said in Zulu that this boy is already dead and this girl kept on calling his name, she kept on calling him, Zolile, Zolile, as she was crying and weeping.

Antoinette Musi called her brother by his name, but he did not answer. He was wounded and blood was “coming out through the mouth and blood [was] on the neck.” At Baragwanath Hospital two doctors met them and carried Hector into the clinic. Musi stood outside:

There came a nurse who called me and directed me where to go. That is where I found the doctor inside. He asked me the name of Hector and told me that I will be a witness… I heard the doctor while I was still there, mention the word “mortuary” and I realised then that he [Hector] had passed away.

Tremor

It was as if, barely buried under the dust of the streets, a network of incendiary fuses carried the terrible knowledge everywhere in Soweto: “a White man … [h]ad killed a child, a Black child.”

Back at the offices of the West Rand Administration Board in Mphuthi Street, Dr. Edelstein, senior official in charge of welfare, returned with the windscreen of his car smashed, desperately concerned to let the staff there know that there was trouble and that they should leave the office immediately.

He came in running, and he just thumbed his right hand, and uttered something, my Lord! which I have not forgotten, he just said [to Mr Hobkirk], “I told them that it was going to happen.” Then he came into our office and repeated the same words, “I told them that it was going to happen.”

The children were coming back up from Mofolo. Their number had increased tremendously and “there was a change in their mood… They were aggressive.” They came up the road chanting and stoned the office and set two cars alight. The staff locked themselves into an office, and Dr. Edelstein hid under a desk, “so that the children shouldn’t see him.” A window broke under the onslaught of the stones:

Then the children saw me… they asked me where was the White man. I said “no he’s left.” … They pulled me out through the window, that they had smashed. They asked me where the White man was. They were referring to Mr Hobkirk. Mr Hobkirk, his duty is to give the youth work-seekers permits, there are times when he doesn’t give to them, indicating that they are lazy, they don’t want to go and work, so now the youth always have a grudge against such people. They wanted to kill the White man.

It was clear that the children were after Hobkirk specifically, for they shouted that “Mrs. Jacques [another staff member] should not be killed as [she was] the Welfare Worker.” Tlotleng was sure that the children knew nothing about Dr. Edelstein, but the children started demolishing the building:

[P]ulling out the cabinets, there was such a great deal of noise that … he panicked and dashed out of the building. I just heard the children saying “here is the White man”, then they started assaulting him and throwing him with stones—they didn’t recognise him. He ran towards the tennis courts. There are some tennis courts not far away. That was the last time that I saw him, running towards the tennis courts. And at that stage the children were still assaulting him and throwing him with stones.

Back at the building, the children had managed to break down the locked door and started pulling out the filing cabinets and the benches before setting everything alight. Some of the children asked Tlotleng why he was still standing there, whether he was not afraid that they would assault him because he worked for the Bantu Administration. He left and, being worried about what might happen to the rest of the staff, at first sought refuge with some workers who had hidden in a house nearby. Later he made his way home past the burning Bantu Administration building at Dube, past a number of children who had looted the bottle store at Moroka and were “running around with all the liquor that they had looted.”

After the shots were fired, things got more chaotic and students began to attack many different targets:

Burnt-out Cars on Street in Front of Uncle Tom’s Hall. Source: SAB K345

Uncle Tom’s Hall truck, burnt-out and flipped. Source: SAB K345

Rail crossing, Maponya. Source: SAB K345

Overturned VW kombi, Maponya. Source: SAB K345

Boys with fists raised, Soweto. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Car with broken windshield, 16 June 1976, Orlando Station. Source: SAB K345

Street corner, Phomolong Clinic

Street corner, Phomolong Clinic

Sign for Phomolong Clinic

Dead woman with police officer, Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Man dead amongst rubble, Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Man dead in courtyard with police and African onlookers, Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Burning truck, Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Truck burning with crowd, Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Aerial view: building, Soweto. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Aerial view: truck, Soweto. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Destroyed bottle store, Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

WRAB smoke and tree, White City. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

WRAB burning building, White City. June 1976. Source: SAB K34

Destroyed bus in back of Phefeni bottle store, completely burnt-out and missing rear tires. Source: SAB K345, vol. 326

Aftermath

Over the next two days the chaos deepened and the stories took on an almost surreal quality. Peter Magubane, a photographer working for the Rand Daily Mail,was on his way to work on the morning of June 18 when he drove through the Diepkloof intersection. A crowd had gathered around a dead body, another victim of the night. “The whole intersection was littered with bottles and burnt out chairs from the bar at the beerhall.”

In the midst of the apprehension and fright that gripped Soweto, rumors spread like wildfire, often about police brutality or students being intimidated into taking part in marches and further boycotts. At the core of many of these rumors was often more than a kernel of truth. Matthew Boyi Manyana, a reporter for the Rand Daily Mail, was working with Zwelake Sisulu in Soweto the night of the 17th. They had parked their car almost directly opposite the police station. As the night wore on, a group of about twenty youths were led into the charge office:

At one stage those who had not been severely injured, were forced to run, literally run as they walked, as they moved in pairs into the charge office… They looked scared at the time. They were running into the charge office… It would have been about 9:30, 10 o’clock at night. They were running in pairs. The police kept assaulting them with batons… About six to eight policemen… Africans and Whites… After some time the same group of youths were taken out of the charge office and led to an open ground nearby where next to which about eight corpses were lying uncovered.

The police, mostly black officers, forced them to hop for about twenty minutes and assaulted them by “beating them up with batons and rubber hoses almost indiscriminately about the body.” There was a lot of noise throughout the time they were there, Manyana and Sisulu heard people “screaming in the charge office” and they overheard someone say, “Ja, moer hom, moer hom” (Yes, murder him, murder him). After a while the youths were ordered back out of the charge office to load the corpses into a waiting mortuary van:

While the bodies were being loaded, the mortuary van driver kept kicking the youths. There were 4 youths to one body. Two would carry the corpse from the front and others holding—and two others holding the legs and they literally dumped each body into the mortuary van. The attendant who was the driver, who was wearing a white dustcoat, would punch these youths and kick them. The whole experience was quite frightening to me.

Some of these accounts were deeply sinister: Constable Abraham Johannes Burger, on patrol in Soweto on June 17, reported finding the partially burnt body of a 16-year-old boy lying next to the burnt-out wreckage of a Volkswagen van. Near the Meadowlands police station he encountered a man whose ears had been cut off. The next day, behind the Meadowlands post office, he was directed to the body of a young African woman, lying up against a fence:

[D]ie liggaam was gedeeltelik nakend, die privaatdeel was verbrand en ‘n stukwond op die voorhoof tussen die oë asook steekwonde aan haar borste en skouers. Ons het die liggaam na Meadowlands polisiestasie geneem en daar gelaat. Terwyl die liggaam in ons sorg was, was dit nie verder beskadig nie, ons voertuig was ook nie in ‘n ongeluk betrokke terwyl ons die liggaam vervoer het nie. Dit was volgens voorkoms duidelik dat die betrokke bantoevrou op ‘n grusame wyse om die lewe gebring was.

[T]he body was partially naked, her private parts were burned, and [there was] a knife wound between the eyes, as well as knife wounds on her breasts and shoulders. We took the body to Meadowlands police station and left it there. While the body was in our care, it was not further damaged. Our vehicle was also not involved in an accident while we were transporting the body. It was to all appearances clear that the woman concerned had been killed in the most brutal way.

It was during the morning of Thursday, June 17, that the uprising spread to Alexandra, a township immediately north of Johannesburg, to Vosloorus and Katlehong in the East Rand, on the West Rand to Mohlakeng and Randfontein, and to the University of Zululand and the University of the North in Pietersburg. White students as the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg protested the Soweto shootings. Everywhere, demonstrators, students, and people on the streets expressed solidarity with the schoolchildren of Soweto, explicitly tying their own demonstrations and battles with the police to the activities in Soweto. The tone of the uprising changed, as did the expressions and targets of protest.

Defying predictions of how quickly the unrest would be brought under control, it gathered momentum. One night in August, police came upon eighty “oproermakers” (rioters), on the corner of 11th Avenue and Selbourne Street in Alexandra, who were stopping homeward-bound workers, taking and burning their passbooks, and intimidating them. The rioters had also set up a roadblock on Selbournestreet. By this time the police had already been issued “No. 9 fyn hael, ook bekend as donshael” (No. 9 fine shot, also known as fluffy shot) to shoot protestors, and they used it on this occasion to disperse the crowd:

Die rede vir hierdie opdrag was dat traanrook slegs ‘n baie beperkte uitwerking op die oproermakers in die buitelug gehad het en dat die onskuldige werkers asook lede van die publiek baie meer daronder gely het as die oproermakers self. Die oproermakers het later so gewoon geraak om die traanrook te ontwyk, dat hulle slegs na link of regs of voor die traanrook uit beweeg het. Om aan te toon hoe doelgerig die poging was wat aangewend was om die gebruik van traanrook te laat slaag, was daar reeds op hierdie tydstip 979 traanrookgranate en traanrookpatrone afgevuur op die oproermakers. Dosyne knuppel stormlope was toe reeds uitgevoer, sonder dat dit enige skynbare blywende uitwerking op die oproermakers gehad het. ‘n Hele aantal knuppels was toe alreeds stukkend geslaan op die oproermakers.

The reason for this order was that teargas only had a very limited effect on the rioters in the open air and that innocent workers as well as members of the public suffered much more under it than the rioters themselves. The rioters later got so used to dodging the teargas, that they simply moved to the left or to the right or out of reach of the teargas. To show how purposeful the attempt was to make the use of teargas effective, by this time already 979 teargas grenades and teargas shells had been shot at the rioters. Dozens of baton assaults had already been made, without that having any apparent lasting effect on the rioters. A whole number of batons had by then already been broken on the heads of rioters.109

It was already dark, so five times 500 flares were shot off to brighten the scene. Despite the blasts from the shotgun, no wounded persons were found, but police confiscated 40 half-burnt passbooks that “vermoedelik deur die oproermakers van die werkers geroof was en aan die brand gesteek is” (were presumably stolen from the workers by the rioters and burnt). T. J. Swanepoel, the South African Police colonel, testified that there were posters all over Alexandra township in August of 1976, but that their emphasis had changed:

Jacobs:
Was daar plakkate wat spesifiek oor die oorspronklike moeilikheid gegaan het, naamlik die Afrikaans as voertaal? Swanepoel:
Behalwe vir die eerste paar dae, die twee dae wat ek daar was en toe vier of vyf dae wat ek gemis het, het ek dit nooit weer gesien nie. Jacobs:
het nie weer iets spesifieks daaromtrent gesien nie? Swanepoel:
Nooit weer enig—of slagspreuke op mure of plakkate, ek het dit nooit weer gesien nie… [padversperrings] … Op die hoek van 20ste Laan en Rooseveldstraat, Alexandra was byvoorbeeld een waarop die slagspreuk “Vorster se gat, een plus een is twee, Free Mandela” en met swastikas bo en onder geverf. Slagspreuke op die ou bekende kommunistiese patroon waarin geëis word dat die polisie uit ‘n bepaalde onluste-gebied onttrek moet word, sodra hulle die skroef van die oproermakers begin aandraai, het oral in Alexandra begin verskyn. Sommige slagspreuke was op die teerblad van sommige strate geverf en ander op plakkate wat teen pale en geboue vasgemaak is. Hierdie taktiek word telkens in nie-kommunistiese lande gebruik. Die eis is dan ook gewoonlik: onttrek die polisie en laat die mag in die hande van die massa.

Posters, Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Poster: “Black Power, We Want Vorster Soon,” Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345

Poster: “Warning!!! Don’t go to work,” Alexandra. June 1976. Source: SAB K345