SOUTH AFRICA: The Soweto Uprising: A Soul-Cry of Rage

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Minor Import. What triggered the rioting was an issue that clearly was of minor import to the government, yet had great symbolic importance in the ghetto. In 1974 the Pretoria Government Education Department ruled that students in Soweto's schools−about 250 of them serve at least 200,000 pupils in triple shifts−must take some subjects in Afrikaans, the Dutch-based language that, along with English, is one of the two official languages for white South Africa. What particularly angered the students was that blacks in tribal areas were allowed to opt for classes in either tongue, as well as in African languages. Most of them chose English; Afrikaans, for blacks, is not only the primary language of the government, the civil service and the hated police, but is also, as one Soweto teacher put it, "a symbol of our oppression. The issue has become a symbol of resistance among our youth to white authority."

To protest the language decree, groups of high school students last Wednesday attempted to organize a rally at Orlando Stadium, Soweto's main sports arena. As the placard-waving students−perhaps 10,000 strong−approached the stadium, they were blocked by a contingent of black police, led by white officers. Trying to disperse the students, the police used tear gas and then fired into the air. Only then−acting in self-defense, police officials insisted−did the troopers fire directly into the rampaging mob; one 13-year-old black boy was killed and several people were wounded.

Some witnesses claimed that police had provoked the conflict. A black reporter for the Johannesburg Star saw a police officer pick up a stone and hurl it into the crowd. Then, he said, "some students began picking up stones. Shouting 'Amandhla [power],' they moved haltingly toward the police. A black police sergeant was explaining to a group of parents that there would be no trouble, that the children weren't fighting, when an officer opened fire."

One Soweto resident, Langa Skosana, was caught in the crossfire of police bullets and stones hurled by the rioting students. "It was the most terrifying moment of my life," he said later. "The police opened direct fire. It is terrifying to watch a gun being aimed at you. I turned and ran. Had I lain on the ground the students would have trampled me."

The demonstrators scattered. Many headed for the township's administration building, setting fire to vehicles along the way, attacking any white official they saw. One of them was clubbed to death after being dragged bodily from his car. According to a black reporter who witnessed the scene: "He swerved to avoid knocking down any of the crowd. A huge rock was thrown through the windscreen. Students dragged him out of the car by his hair, then they used sticks and stones and everything to beat him to death." Yet even in the midst of racial hatred, there were countless individual acts of courage and kindness. One white township official spent the first night of the troubles in the home of a black family, who sheltered him and then smuggled him to safety next morning. A South African television cameraman-reporter team escaped injury when five blacks bundled them into a car and drove away from an angry mob.