Abstract
This short book is part of a series published by the University of Ohio on histories of Africa. It is a brief record of the student response in several Witwatersrand African townships in 1975 and 1976 to an attempt by the apartheid government of South Africa to force African children to use Afrikaans as the teaching medium. Up to that time, all teaching in South African schools for Africans was conducted in South African English.
The recording of the events of 1975 and 1976 is an important contribution to the history of South Africa. We need specific records like this to add depth and context to our understanding of African history as a whole.
The author relies heavily on oral reports and this is one of the book’s great strengths. Oral histories are crucial: ordinary people – often denied a voice and absent from conventional historical records – can tell their own stories in their own voice.
The book has five chapters, starting with the causes and character of the student response. The second chapter describes what the author calls the political awakening in Soweto. The third and fourth chapters record chronologically the events and the reaction of the apartheid state to African students’ refusal to accept Afrikaans as the teaching medium. The final chapter discusses the aftermath and suggests that it led to a novel mass movement in South Africa.
The book is written from the perspective of ‘Black Consciousness’ as elaborated by Steve Biko. What Black Consciousness means is not explained in this book, perhaps for lack of space or the assumption that readers would be familiar with the notion. Judging from the slogans used during these events, such as ‘Sons and Daughters of the Black nations’ (p. 133), I infer that Black Consciousness is a call to ethnic division. It is identity politics. The events described in this book occurred about 40 years ago: plenty of historical experience since then indicates where identity or ethnicity politics leads. The events in West Asia over the last 16 years show that identity politics is a disaster for the working class, for which reason imperialists advocate it everywhere.
I came away from reading this book with two overwhelming impressions.
First, the events described in this book from 1970 to 1976 repeat the history of the African National Congress from 1913 to 1960. In the beginning, there were petitions to the authorities, which were uniformly ignored. Then followed demonstrations and strikes, such as the miners’ strike in the 1940s and the bus strike in the 1950s, which were met with overwhelming state violence, as also happened in Sharpeville in 1960. Then, some of the democratic resistance came to the inevitable conclusion that state power must be met with revolutionary, military power. So, the African National Congress in the 1950s, in concert with the South African Communist Party, came to the inevitable and necessary conclusion that they must win state power and that military action against the apartheid state was required to do so. All this is well known. Indeed, the author of this book describes how a significant number of the student leaders involved in the events described also came to the same realization. However, this is mentioned only in passing instead of presenting it as a major result of the events in the 1970s, which is my view.
Second, the author appears to emphasize with approval the spontaneous nature of the student reaction to the imposition of Afrikaans on an education system that was already designed to ensure that Africans rose no higher than ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ as explained by HF Verwoerd, Minister for Native Affairs and later Prime Minister, in the 1950s. The African National Congress and its allies had already learned the painful lesson that to fight a state power one needs a highly organized mass movement. Endless examples have shown that spontaneous mass movements, while invaluable, will never have the authority to displace a state power. The mass actions in France in 1968, the Occupy movement in the United States in 2011, and many other cases have shown that such activities mobilize support, but have never been a serious challenge to state power. For that, an organized political party is essential to prevent these valuable spontaneous movements from dissipating the political energies aroused.
Finally, the author does not really conclude with a clear assessment of the historical significance of the events described. It seems to me that the book ends with the implication that these student events were a direct and powerful force leading to the surrender of the apartheid regime. This is clearly not the case. However, this book is a rewarding and valuable contribution to the history of the peoples of South Africa.