By Riaan de Villiers
TODAY is the 50th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, which began on 16 June 1976 — a momentous event which, despite annual commemorations and the declaration of an official holiday, now called Youth Day, is still not adequately remembered or fully understood. What is certain is that it changed the course of South African history.
Before June 16, there was a sense that, following its successful repression of black dissent in the early 1960s, the National Party government could retain control over black communities, and remain in power for the foreseeable future. On June 16, this perception was shattered. While the then Prime Minister, B.J. Vorster ascribed the uprising to ‘foreign agitators’, and vowed to restore ‘law and order’, it was evident that popular resistance to apartheid had been rekindled, and would cause a growing crisis that would undermine the viability of white minority rule.
Indeed, the uprising – which soon spread to other parts of the country — provided a template for future resistance to apartheid which would continue to mount until the constitutional negotiations in the early 1990s and the transition to democracy.
There are many accounts of experiences on that day and subsequently which cast light on various aspects of this momentous event and its aftermath. We have chosen to publish two: the testimony of the renowned photographer Peter Magubane to a special session of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, held in Soweto in 1998; and the evidence of Sophie Tema, a reporter for the newspaper The World, to the Cillie Commission of Inquiry into the ‘unrest’, whose reports and later testimony challenged aspects of the official version, notably the versions provided by the police.
The third item is about the photograph that is indelibly associated with June 16, of a dying schoolboy, Hector Pieterson, in the arms of an agonised youth, with Hector’s weeping sister, Antoinette, following closely behind. As is often the case in South Africa, It’s a never-ending story.
A note about photographs
As also noted elsewhere, we are not reproducing any photographs of events on the day – either a direct version of Sam Nzima‘s image, or photographs taken by Peter Magubane. This is because images taken on that day are still subject to copyright, and can only be legally reproduced if rights of use are purchased from the copyright holders, or stock photo agencies licensed to sell those rights. The costs are beyond the limits of Toverview’s modest budgets.
While pirate versions of some images appear on the internet, and could be reproduced, we are choosing not to do so — not only because this would expose us (and anyone else doing so) to legal action and claims of damages, but also in recognition of the long struggles waged by Nzima and other South African photographers of this era to regain copyright over their own images from the media houses they were working for at the time, and to start earning the royalties they were entitled to.