June 16,  marked the 50th anniversary of the Soweto uprisings in South Africa. Presently it’s an official South African holiday, Youth Day. It commemorates the hundreds of young people killed fighting the Apartheid system. June 16, 1976, will live in the memories of South Africans and antiracist workers worldwide for generations to come.

In February 1990, Nelson Mandela — leader of the African National Congress (ANC) and the international face of the struggle against Apartheid — was released after 27 years in South African prisons. In March 1992, white South Africans voted in a referendum to end Apartheid, opening the door to negotiations and ushering in an era of high hopes for racial justice. But the referendum was only the final concession in a struggle that Black workers had been waging for decades, one that grew into an international movement spanning six continents and mobilizing millions of workers — including tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers who fought for over a decade against the expansion of Apartheid into the rest of Southern Africa. By May 1994, Mandela had been sworn in as South Africa’s first Black president, sparking celebrations around the world.

We celebrate the fall of Apartheid. But we also approach the history of South Africa through the lens of dialectical materialism — and that history is more complicated than the popular narrative allows. What is often left out is that the rebellion against Apartheid was led, in large part, by communists, and that its foot soldiers were overwhelmingly Black workers whose labor power, withheld through strikes and organizing, was the movement’s real weapon. That power was so undeniable that even Washington — no ally of Black liberation — eventually had to accommodate it. The deal that ended Apartheid required U.S. approval. The U.S. had backed the Apartheid state for decades chiefly as a bulwark against the spread of communism; once the Soviet Union and Communist China ceased to pose that threat, the U.S. had little reason to keep the regime in power, especially as its global unpopularity had become a liability to U.S. interests in the region. The price of that approval was a promise from Mandela and the ANC that capitalism in the “New South Africa” would go untouched.

In the end, the sacrifices of perhaps millions of Black workers were traded for a South Africa that kept its capitalist core while wearing a new face — one of Black leadership. That “national liberation,” run by Black leadership within a still-capitalist system, has in some respects deepened rather than dismantled the old apartheid order. The recent wave of racist  violence and mass deportations of migrant workers from neighboring African countries is one stark example: Black workers turned against fellow Black workers, while the capitalist relations that produce scarcity and desperation go unchallenged.

50 years later, the struggle against the system that traps Black and migrant workers in poverty wages, segregated schools, substandard healthcare, and police violence continues — from the informal settlements of South Africa, to classrooms in Brooklyn, to checkpoints in the West Bank. The rebellion against Apartheid is not a closed chapter of history; it is a living example of a truth the ruling class would rather workers forget: Black workers are not a marginal or secondary force in the fight against racism and capitalism. They remain leading, a key force for communist revolution itself — then, and now.

The following is a reprint of an article published in CHALLENGE newspaper in 2010. 
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English and Dutch settlers (Boers, or Afrikaners) colonized South Africa, and in 1948 the Afrikaner-led government formalized a racist system of segregation called Apartheid — Afrikaans for “apartness.” Modeled on a combination of U.S. slavery and its successor, Jim Crow, the system denied Black Africans political, economic, and cultural equality at every level of society. It was Black workers — miners, domestic laborers, factory hands — who built the mass movements, strikes, and armed resistance that made the system ultimately ungovernable. 

Black African students received inferior education in overcrowded schools and had to pay the equivalent of half their parents’ monthly income to even attend school, while white students received free education.

The Soweto rebellion’s immediate spark was a new requirement that math and social studies be taught in Afrikaans, the Apartheid government’s official language. However, teachers had always taught in English. Most were unable to teach in Afrikaans, a third language for them besides their native one and English.

The rebellion begins

On June 13, 1976, the students called a meeting; 400 attended. The Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC) was selected to lead the campaign against this new racist edict. Two delegates per school were elected. They refused to accept the order to be taught in Afrikaans, still another racist burden imposed by the Apartheid government. Students, fearing being stopped, told their parents nothing. They decided to march to Orlando stadium to present their demands. On June 16 at 7 A.M., about 5,000 students, most between 10 and 20 years old, met at various points around Soweto Township and started marching. But before they got inside the stadium, police with vans formed a wall blocking them.

The cops fired tear gas, warning them to disperse. With the students holding their ground, the police started shooting into the crowd. Twelve-year-old Hector Petersen was the first one killed. Then angry students began hurling stones and bottles at the cops, running forward, throwing, then retreating and repeating the action. This continued all day.

The battle rages

Symbols of the hated Apartheid system were burned: administrative offices, government buses and vehicles. Liquor stores and beer halls were looted and then set afire. Battles continued through the night, with police shooting wildly in the dark (Soweto had no street lights).

Thousands of injured students went to the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital where some died in the hallways and others outside the emergency room. Over 200 students were murdered. Workers arrived home to find cops everywhere in personnel carriers called “hippos,” vehicles built to withstand landmines in the guerilla wars in Namibia and Mozambique. The bodies of dead and injured students were littered all over. Clouds of black smoke hung over the Township.

The next day most workers voluntarily stayed away from their jobs. Then the students realized they’d have to talk to their parents to expand their forces to fight Apartheid. In intensive house-to-house visits they explained the issues to their parents. The police banned all political and mass meetings.

Chrysler workers back the students

On June 22, mass funerals became mass meetings. Townships near Pretoria joined the struggle. Over 1,000 South African Chrysler auto workers struck to support the students, the first time workers had done so. The boycott spread to the Alexandra Township. By June 18, the Apartheid government closed all schools in Soweto and Alexandra.

SSRC’s next major action, set for August 4, was more ambitious — organizing a three-day general strike and a school boycott. This had not happened since 1961. Students cut the key signal box, halting trains from running to Soweto. Students gathered at all the commuting sites, urging workers to stay home. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 workers struck. It was 60% successful over three days.
By now, the student boycott had spread to the Western and Eastern Cape. The Apartheid government detained hundreds of students indefinitely to stop the demonstrations. Then they used a vicious divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting Zulu workers against the students.

Fight racist divisions

Many Zulu male migrant workers lived in hostels, without their families. The police told them the students would attack them. During the second three-day boycott one hostel was burned, probably by an agent provocateur. Under police protection, the Zulus then attacked the students and residents.

The SSRC, realizing they had to win the Zulu workers politically, explained how the police had misled them. Zulu workers won to see that the students’ and Soweto workers’ fight against Apartheid was their fight too.

The third SSRC demonstration, August 23, spread to Witwatersrand and the Transvaal. A solid 75% to 80% participation was sustained over three days. Almost 750,000 workers participated. Zulu migrant workers gave almost total support.

Sporadic protests continued. In April, 1977, the SSRC successfully stopped rent increases in Soweto. In September, when Black Consciousness Movement leader Stephen Biko was murdered in prison, rebellions spread nation-wide, especially in the Eastern Cape. The following month the last SSRC leader fled into exile. On October 19, the government banned 17 organizations, most connected to the Black Consciousness Movement.

A worldwide movement erupts

Internationally, the rebellion inspired workers and students to hold anti-apartheid demonstrations supporting the South African rebels. Students at universities throughout the U.S. and Europe launched major divestment campaigns demanding college Boards of Trustees sell off stocks in companies doing business in South Africa, such as Ford, IBM, Eastman Kodak and Hewlett-Packard. Citibank was the largest U.S. lender to Apartheid South Africa.

Pressure was maintained throughout the 1980’s. In 1990, the government was forced to lift the ban on resistance movements. That year Nelson Mandela was freed from 29 years in prison.

Today, while “official” Apartheid has ended, it continues unabated through extreme poverty and racism. The workers and youth of South Africa must build on their militant history and move in a revolutionary communist direction so that their amazing struggles in battling Apartheid will not have been in vain.