June 16

Two overall issues, both relating to the apartheid or racial capitalist state, are critical for understanding the events that took place in 1976. The first has ...

Despite the despair in many communities and the cynicism of state officials, there is hope. They demonstrated to us what was possible through the processes of public mobilisation, education and democratic organisation. And through this, they also laid down a challenge for what we were meant to teach and to learn and how that was to be done, for what and whose purposes and towards what kind of social system. The first has to do with the political economy of the apartheid state, the draconian political and economic system that was established in the interests of a racist minority in our country. June 1976 and the years that followed are enormously important not only in the history of the country but also for its relevance today. Who can deny the utter desperation that gives rise to all the psychosocial trauma, gender-based and other forms of violence, xenophobia and social dysfunction we see daily? We need hardly spell out the conditions that continue to face the vast majority of the people of South Africa so many years after 1994. They showed us that you could organise and mobilise both secretly and publicly to challenge the system. They showed us that the armoured vehicles of the apartheid government were not unbreakable fortresses. This is happening in a country that has enough physical, environmental, material and intellectual resources to build a caring and compassionate nation. This education equality was inseparable from their vision of a fair and egalitarian society. Despite the annual commemoration of this momentous day, the context and origins of 16 June recede into the past.