STATEMENT OF THE ANC YOUTH LEAGUE ON THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF JUNE 16 UPRISINGS
15 June 2006
The advent of democracy brought with it a new form of youth activism, driven by a desire to achieve full emancipation in a country that is free, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and at peace with itself. This new struggle is the natural evolution of the triumph of the liberation struggle against tyranny and oppression. It is a progressive step forward from the moments of yesteryear where our youth was regarded as dispensable by the brutal apartheid regime.
The events that came to pass that fateful day on 16 June 1976 and continued for months thereafter, engulfing the country in flames, forever entrenched the role of the youth as one of the motive forces of our revolution. It is therefore no fallacy that South Africa's youth earned their stripes in the battlefield as brave footsoldiers who led the charge from the front. Their selfless commitment to South Africa's liberation and their inextinguishable fire and patriotism as Oliver Tambo's young lions continues to shine bright like the Sirius in the heavens. The voices of the founding fathers of our glorious youth movement continue to reverberate across the length and breath of our country and remain an inspiration in our quest for sustainable youth emancipation.
Throughout South Africa's history, our youth have been the defenders of the realm, the soldiers who took a vow to defend the revolution and our democracy with their lives. This is an unspoken pledge that has passed on from generation to generation and given momentum by great youth leaders in each successive generation. It is similarly our task to rise to the occasion and assume the mantle that has passed through generations of our militant youth.
As we commemorate thirty years of the 1976 student uprisings that altered the political landscape of our country forever, we must pay homage to all those who dedicated their lives and service to the attainment of our liberation, and placed themselves at harm's way so we could all be free. We must lower our banners and honour the memory of the hundreds of unsung heroes and heroines whose names may not be inscribed in any memorial plaque or published in the many books about June 16. These are the true heroes and heroines to whom we will forever be indebted. It is the spirit of their dedication to the struggle and their selfless commitment to the attainment of its goals that must continue to inform our political programme, as we seek to advance and realise what they stood for.
We stand at attention and salute these gallant fighters of our revolution who prepared the path before us. Theirs must never be a struggle in vain, and ours is an obligation to advance the youth emancipation agenda with greater vigour and determination. If we remain true to the aspirations of the youth of 1976, we will rise to the occasion and become true champions of youth emancipation.
We must take responsibility for bringing to reality a coherent and effective strategy that will empower young people and place them at the driving seat of their own development and empowerment. Those who still believe they can act as custodians of youth empowerment because they believe they understand youth aspirations and needs better than young people themselves must know that the jig is up and it is time they went home.
As we retrace the footprints in the sands of time, we walk in the footprints of those who, when called upon, did not hesitate to champion that cause of the masses. These include compatriots such as Solomon "Kalushi" Mahlangu, Tsietsi Mashinini and others of their generation who carried the cause for justice on their shoulders.
In the last week, young people from every corner of our country representing all strands of our youth, from political youth organisations to civil society bodies and Non Governmental Organisations, converged at the Emperor's Palace in Ekurhuleni to conduct a review of the path we have traversed over the last 11 years and a thoroughgoing assessment of the effectiveness of the strategies employed thus far in advancing youth development. Indeed theirs was a resounding voice that gave fresh impetus to a sustained programme to improve our approach to youth development as a country.
It is significant that these diverse organisations, some of whom do not share political ideology with the ANC and by extension the ANCYL, endorsed the ANCYL's vision of an Integrated Youth Development Strategy, driven by a unitary institutional arrangement that is both vertically (across spheres of government) and horizontally (across public, private and NGO sectors) integrated. There is no greater commitment to the ideals embodied by the youth of 1976 than this historic adoption of a youth development strategy to take youth development in South Africa to new heights with sustainable outcomes.
The message South Africa's youth is sending is that institutions like Umsobomvu Youth Fund and the National and Provincial Youth Commissions have reached their sell-by dates, and these must be replaced by an effective and robust institutional mechanism that is better capacitated to drive youth empowerment in a tangible and sustainable manner that propels young people towards the centre of our country's national development.
It is therefore our expectation and hope that Cabinet will proceed with speed to endorse and indeed roll out the implementation of this strategy. We have all the confidence in our government that their commitment to youth development goes beyond mere lip service and they will demonstrate this by breathing life to this historic strategy that is sure to put the country on a new development path.
Our commitment to the advancement of the ideals that informed the 1976 generation remains unshakeable. Our programme of actions continues to acknowledge these and strive for their realisation. Our campaign to create a safer environment for our children launched in 2004 is premised on the ideal underpinned by the commitment that says, "Never again, shall our youth be robbed of their childhood in order to liberate their country in the battlefield." This campaign was personified by the tragedy that befell baby Karabo in Soweto, and hence he has become the face of this campaign.
As we recall the heroic struggles of yesteryear embodied in the youth of 1976, we must fight the evil that is turning our nation into a nation of monsters incapable of caring for its young. Those who kidnap, rape, maim and murder children have no place in our society, and our criminal justice system must impose on them the harshest penalties permitted by our constitution.
Every member of the ANC Youth League, and every self respecting young person must internalise this message and assume the role of being the guardian of our children who remain vulnerable and helpless in the face of unbelievable cruelty.
Our commitment to the fight against the scourge of HIV/AIDS has never been greater. We must double our efforts as a country to ensure that all our interventions yield the required results. It is not enough to simply shout from the rooftops and broadcast the message to abstain, but we must all roll up our sleeves and volunteer in our communities to educate others and provide home based care to those who have succumbed to the virus. Similarly, the roll-out of anti retroviral drugs as part of the government roll out plan must be accelerated as part of the multi-pronged interventions in this regard. The ANC Youth League, once again commits itself to lead from the front and mobilise all organs of civil society to work together to achieve a zero new infection by 2014.
Similarly, education remains at the core of our efforts to build a generation of youth that will lead the country with diligence and take it to new heights. It must never elude us that today's youth are tomorrow's leaders and our failure to adequately prepare them for the responsibilities of tomorrow will only propel the country to a downward spiral and a grim future. Our campaign for access to education both at school and tertiary level will be intensified. We will continue to lobby government to review the funding formula employed by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and to abolish the blacklisting of students in the credit bureaux. Advancing these campaigns represents our unflinching commitment to the realisation of the ideals that fuelled the spirit of the 1976 generation, and we vow that we will not rest until these ideals have been realised.
As we prepare for yet another memorable rally in Durban, others have not hesitated to draw unfounded inferences suggesting that our rally is a contestation for political space with the government programme in Johannesburg on the same day. These suggestions are at best mischievous and at worst utter rubbish, which seeks to fuel perceptions of divisions born out of the overactive imagination of some in the media.
Why is it suddenly convenient to point out that the official ANCYL rally is held separately from the Youth Commission rally, while this arrangement has existed for the last ten years? To add intrigue to their cloak and daggers theory, they cannot resist the temptation to place the ANCYL President and the Chairperson of the National Youth Commission at opposite ends of the spectrum suggesting that they personify different camps within the ANC.
Whatever inferences are conjured up and conspiracy theories manufactured by those seeking to advance their own selfish agendas, we refuse to be blackmailed or used as pawns in an intricate political game. June 16 belongs to the youth of South Africa, and no one will attach labels on them because they chose to attend the ANCYL or the NYC rally. Ours is a common agenda, to advance the struggle against poverty and unemployment and therefore owe no one an apology. These theories are once again, blatant attempts by some among us to undermine the cohesion and unity of the ANC.
Let this message be a clarion call to all our youth to jealously defend the cohesion and unity of the ANC and to become custodians of its future, entrenched in the age-old traditions that have kept it a vibrant movement over the decades.
Issued by:
Fikile Mbalula
President: ANC Youth League
54 Sauer Street
Johannesburg
2001
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ANC Message on the 30th anniversary of June 16
The African National Congress salutes the youth of South Africa on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising.
We pay tribute to three decades of fighting youth, whose tireless struggle and selfless sacrifice contributed so centrally to the defeat of apartheid and the achievement of a democratic South Africa.
We honour those young martyrs who laid down their lives so that their blood may nourish the roots of the tree of freedom.
We salute these young heroes of our revolution – both past and present – for having taken up the challenge set by the founding members of the ANC Youth League in 1944 to African youth to “(lay) its services at the disposal of the national liberation movement, the African National Congress, in the firm belief, knowledge and conviction that the cause of Africa must and will triumph.”
This challenge was taken up by the 1976 generation as they swelled the ranks of the liberation movement and added new impetus to the struggle for freedom.
This challenge was taken up by the youth of the 1980s as they fought pitched battles with the apartheid security machine as it desperately tried to cling on to the remnants of a doomed system of national oppression.
This challenge was taken up by the youth of the 1990s who stood shoulder to shoulder with the people in their determined effort to usher in a new order in South Africa, and who became the young builders and guardians of our new democratic institutions.
This challenge continues to be taken up, in a new millennium, by a new generation of young freedom fighters, who have set their sights on the eradication of poverty, the creation of employment opportunities for all, and the defeat of the final vestiges of an iniquitous economic and social system.
Through their actions and in their determined commitment, these successive generations of young South Africans have declared to the nation and the world that they will emulate the spirit and example of the founders of the ANC Youth League, who said, in 1944:
“The formation of the African National Congress Youth League is an answer and assurance to the critics of the national movement that African Youth will not allow the struggles and sacrifices of their fathers to have been in vain. Our fathers fought so that we, better equipped when our time came, should start and continue from where they stopped.”
The generations of youth since 1976 have reiterated the words of their celebrated forebearers and made these words their own.
The formation of the ANC Youth League was a pivotal moment in the development of our struggle, a turning point in the history of our nation. It marked the emergence of a new breed of young leaders characterised not only by their determined and disciplined radicalism, but by their commitment to the highest of ideals.
Not prepared to bend their knee before the might of the apartheid state, not prepared to compromise their principles, these young leaders held firmly to the high ideals that have become a hallmark of the South African liberation struggle.
Even among successive generations of youth, and even at the bleakest of times, these progressive youth have not abandoned the high ideals on which they founded their activism.
They would not accept that the South African people deserved anything less than complete liberation. They would not accept that South Africa could be anything less than a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society. And they would not accept that the fighting youth of this country could relax until these objectives had been achieved.
It is precisely because of these high ideals that we are able to celebrate this anniversary in a free South Africa. It is precisely because of these high ideals that the fighting youth of this country remain in the saddle, remain engaged in struggle, to ensure that we do not relent in our fight for the freedom of all South Africans.
It is also because of these high ideals that we remain the leading force for progressive transformation in this country. As successive elections have shown, the ANC retains the support and confidence of the overwhelming majority of South Africans. This is because the ANC has refused to abandon its high ideals in pursuit of easy victories.
It is also because the ANC youth, and the ANC more broadly, has demonstrated moral integrity in the face of an immoral and amoral onslaught against its leaders, members and structures.
Over successive decades, inspired by the example of the youth leaders of 1944, the ANC has pursued its struggle guided by the fundamental tenets of moral conduct. It has done so not simply to earn public applause, but because only by adhering in practice to what is moral can we hope to build a society founded on a revolutionary morality distinct and superior to the so-called ‘morality’ of the colonial and apartheid age.
As generations of youth have sought to redefine the values of our society, they have been called upon to reflect those values in their own personal and political behaviour.
This responsibility is as important today as it has been at every point in the struggle for freedom. We are engaged in a struggle to build a society founded on a new set of progressive values, and will not succeed unless the cadres at the forefront of that struggle embody in their own pronouncements and practice the very values we seek to inculcate across society.
Yet as we make progress towards the achievement of this new society, we are simultaneously faced with changing circumstances which put even greater pressure on our cadreship to abandon these values.
It has often been noted that, in the post-1994 period, membership of the liberation movement has not been associated with the great personal risk that had to be endured by our members prior to the advent of democracy. The mere act of joining the ANC was, in the past, an act that required personal courage and sacrifice.
In the qualitatively changed circumstances of a democratic South Africa, there are some people who see membership of the ANC as a vehicle to personal advancement and even enrichment.
This is not a unique challenge. It is something that affects political movements across the world and at many different points in history. Yet it is a development that we must stubbornly resist, for it threatens to undermine the capacity of our movement to achieve its historic mission to liberate our people.
Our youth need to be at the forefront of resisting this tendency. The fighting youth need not only to be exemplary in their own conduct, but ensure that the movement as a whole guards against the growth of this phenomenon.
The fighting youth need to be at the forefront of the struggle to defend the values of the ANC against those who seek to use the organisation to enrich themselves or for other forms of personal advantage.
These were some of the tasks that we spoke about in the ANC National General Council, held in Port Elizabeth in 2000, when we called for the development of a New Cadre, capable of leading the movement and the people towards the realisation of our objectives.
Among the tasks that we assigned to the New Cadre was to continually develop their own understanding, skills, capacity and consciousness so as better to serve the movement and the ongoing struggle for freedom.
In this context, and with particular reference to the youth of today, we must emphasise the importance of education as the cornerstone of any contribution to the betterment of society.
The fighting youth of today need to take up the challenge that motivated the youth of 1976 – the desire for quality, appropriate and equal education for all within the context of a free South Africa seeking to maximise opportunities for all its people.
As the ANC Youth League and other youth and student formations have been doing, the fighting youth of today must necessarily focus on the development of our education system to meet the needs of the people. They must focus on ensuring that all our country’s youth are able to access education and skills development opportunities, and that they are actively involved – not merely as recipients of a service – in shaping the content and form of education that our young people receive.
This pursuit of education and appropriate skills requires not only effective institutions and systems. It also requires a strong sense of discipline and self-discipline among the youth. It requires determined application to the tasks at hand, no matter how difficult, nor how disadvantageous the circumstances.
This sense of discipline needs to extend into other areas of life and struggle. The successive generations of fighting youth have been so successful – and so integral to the development of the nation – precisely because of their ability to exercise discipline and commitment to the tasks at hand.
The ANC Youth League has been able to forge its identity as a pioneering and leading revolutionary component of the ANC and democratic movement precisely because it has approached its task in a disciplined manner, determined at all times to exercise its autonomy within the policies and practices of the mother body.
This sense of discipline needs to be cultivated among youth across society, in whatever formations they find themselves and in whatever activities they are engaged. Because it is only through the exercise of such discipline that the fighting youth of the new millennium will be able to remain focused on the significant and substantial tasks at hand.
As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of June 16, let us recommit ourselves to the vision that inspired the 1976 generation of youth.
Let all of us – whether present youth or past youth – draw on the fighting spirit of the 1976 generation in redoubling our efforts to build a society in which all South Africans may be free from discrimination, oppression, exploitation, poverty, unemployment and violence.
Let us unite the youth of this country – regardless of race, gender or class – in a common, disciplined and revolutionary struggle to give substance to this age of hope.
Let us ensure that through our actions the cause of Africa does indeed triumph.
Long live the memory of the June 16 martyrs!
By President Thabo Mbeki
The publication of this edition of ANC TODAY coincides with the commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising. We therefore take this opportunity once more to salute the outstanding heroes and heroines whose courage, willingness and capacity to sacrifice that belied their youth, made such an important contribution to the victory of our democratic revolution.
We should never allow that the passage of the years and the decades, and changed circumstances, diminish our understanding of the historic meaning of what the youth of our country did from June 16, 1976 onwards.
Our country, which today lives in conditions of freedom, must discharge its responsibility to ensure that the inspiring story of what our youth did, serves, for all time, as part of what constitutes our definition of ourselves as a nation.
We are privileged that many of the then young people who survived the sustained murderous offensive of the apartheid regime against the very young, today play a central role in building the new South Africa for which many of their comrades sacrificed their lives.
Their presence among us, committed, as ever, to advance the cause of the people, communicates the message to all of us that we have an obligation to ensure that the things we do daily actually help to transform into reality the hopes that inspired children as young as was Hector Petersen, when apartheid terror decreed that he had to die.
Our movement, the African National Congress, was 64 years old when the Soweto Uprising exploded in the dusty streets of our townships, acting as a powerful force that took our struggle for national liberation to even higher levels of militancy and intensity.
From the very first day, our movement understood that the Uprising constituted a new and critically important chapter in the struggle it had led for over six decades already. It therefore welcomed the Uprising, saluted the young patriots who were ready to die for freedom, and resolved to do everything to support the fighting youth of our country, integrating them in the broad struggle for national liberation.
In a Message to the People of South Africa broadcast on Radio Freedom on August 26, 1976, the ANC said: “The heroic youth and masses in many parts of our country have stood against brutal massacre and defied police bullets in a sustained offensive against oppression, exploitation and racial humiliation, for political and economic power, for human dignity in a South Africa liberated from the white minority regime. They have attacked many accessible instruments and symbols of domination.
“Demonstrations and acts of resistance in Soweto and other parts of the country are, therefore, not riots by anti-social elements but blows for liberation by an oppressed people. They are not passing disturbances by adventurous and misguided students but an integral part of the continuing and irrepressible liberation struggle of our people. Our youth have raised this struggle to new heights. They have enriched our revolution. The struggle continues.
“There can be no going back. The offensive must be broadened, deepened and generalised to encompass the whole country and involve every section of our people and all social groups with whom we share the common objective of a non-racial democratic South Africa…1976 is, and must be, the year of decision.”
It was not accidental that it was during this “year of decision” that our movement was allowed, for the first time, to address the United Nations General Assembly. On that historic occasion, on October 26, 1976, our then President, the late Oliver Tambo, said:
“For the first time in the history of the United Nations, a representative of the majority of the people of South Africa has been allowed and invited to share this prestigious rostrum with the representatives of the independent and sovereign nations and peoples of the world…
“Despite its imminence, our victory will not come easily. In the last four months, the apartheid regime has demonstrated to all who were ever in doubt that it is determined to fight to the bitter end, without regard for the numbers of our people it butchers in the process. In spite of that practical experience and, indeed, exactly because of it, our people are demanding freedom now.
“They do not ask that their masters should restore to them their rights as free men and women. Rather, by their own actions against immense odds, they are restoring to themselves the right to call themselves free. After three and a quarter centuries of the most brutal national oppression suffered by any people on the African continent, our people, the indigenous majority, are asserting their will to be free with breathtaking heroism.
“There is no vocabulary to describe the nobility and the pathos of the conscious sacrifices that the black youth of South Africa have made over the last four months to free themselves, their people and their country from forces that are determined to keep us forever their chattels…
“Daily in our South Africa, as in Palestine and in East Timor, ordinary people make extraordinary sacrifices in their quest for freedom.
“As revolutionaries we are moved to speak out daily, as we must, to salute these extraordinary sacrifices, wherever they occur. Again as we must, we use extraordinary words to describe these sacrifices. They are heroic, they are selfless, they are noble. But alas, in the end, use and abuse turns even those words upon themselves. Their strength of feeling withers away.
“What then must we say when thousands of hearts have beaten as one in South Africa and hundreds have perished in their unarmed and unequal yet relentless resistance to the oppressor? Shall we say the black people of South Africa have performed a heroic deed and leave it at that? Or shall we coin new words to describe the temper of the young man of ten years who marched undaunted on a French-built armoured car in the streets of Soweto, stone in hand, until he was cut down by a torrent of machine-gun bullets?
“We say no. No words are necessary at all. The blood that our people have shed calls for action, not for more words. It calls for action to destroy the fascist regime that continues to massacre the innocent…
“Typically, the fascist tyranny in our country did not bother to listen to the grievances of the students and the people as a whole. ‘It was at Orlando West’, writes the black South African journalist Willie Bokala, ‘near the Orlando West High School where the law, in its own fashion, gave a hearing to their grievances. Tear gas bombs and gun bullets were the redress they got’. That was on 16 June…
“The mass shootings that characterise South Africa today are…neither an aberration nor freak incidents. They are the concrete expressions of the policy of the apartheid State, whose central features are extreme national oppression, brutal super-exploitation of the oppressed black people and maintenance of this system through open fascism.”
When our movement marked its 69th anniversary, on January 8, 1981, the year of the 5th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, Oliver Tambo said:
“History has imposed an obligation on the youth of today to occupy the forward trenches in the final assault on the bastions of racism, apartheid and colonialism. As the late "Malome" Moses Kotane said in 1968 in a statement to the youth of South Africa:
"At this hour of destiny your country and your people need you. The future of South Africa is yours and it will be what you make of it."
“On the other hand, a people, a country, a Movement that does not value its youth does not deserve its future. The youth of our country, especially in recent times, have already won international recognition as dedicated and gallant fighters in the leading ranks of our revolutionary struggle. Their contribution is already manifest in the changed and changing fortunes of apartheid rule within South Africa. They are already playing their part in giving shape to the South Africa of the future.”
As we marked the 74th anniversary of the ANC, during the year of the 10th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, in the January 8th Statement of that year, 1986, Oliver Tambo said:
“We take this opportunity to salute our students who have continued to march forward in unity and in an uninterrupted and organised offensive, undeterred by the illegal banning of their organisation, COSAS. This achievement is a victory of the entire democratic and revolutionary movement of our country and is worthy of the young lions of the struggle that our students and working youth have become.
“This year, we shall be observing the tenth anniversary of the Soweto Uprising. We shall therefore cast our minds back on a period during which thousands of our youth were killed and maimed in the struggle for a democratic system of education in a democratic country. A whole generation is growing up and has known nothing but daily violence meted out in the streets by the armed killers of the apartheid regime.
“To honour and pay everlasting tribute to the thousands of our students and working youth whose blood has drenched our Motherland in the struggle for freedom and in recognition of their resolve to march forward to victory, we declare June 16 South Africa Youth Day. We are confident that our youth and students, through the length and breadth of our country, will prove themselves worthy of this National Honour.”
We are proud to say that our youth and students did indeed prove themselves worthy of the National Honour to which Oliver Tambo referred, which democratic South Africa confirmed by officially declaring June 16 National Youth Day and designating it as one of our national holidays.
The freedom we attained in 1994, thanks in good measure to the sacrifices of our youth, demanded that the democratic state should consciously address the needs and aspirations of our youth.
In this regard, in the 1996 January 8th Statement of our movement, during the year of the 20th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, Nelson Mandela said:
“The empowerment and development of the youth is central to the whole process of the upliftment of our people and renewal of our society. The youth themselves continue to be a vital player among the forces engaged in the struggle for the fundamental transformation of our country.
“It is in this context that the Youth League is, once again, called upon to play a pioneering role in terms of helping to engage the youth in the new tasks which arise as a result of the defeat of the system of apartheid.”
In this year’s January 8th Statement, we committed ourselves to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising in an appropriate manner. We said that “through (the Uprising) our youth entrenched their role as one of the motive forces of the national democratic revolution, and made it inevitable that this revolution should define youth empowerment and development one of its fundamental tasks…
“The observance of the various anniversaries we have mentioned also provides us with other opportunities to promote our work with regard to mass mobilisation and the activation of various sections of our people, including the women and the youth, raising the level of awareness among the people concerning the current tasks of the national democratic revolution, and further improving the quality of our cadres and members to discharge their responsibility as the leaders of the process of accelerated progressive change in our country.
“The pursuit of this last objective will also help us properly to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Joe Gqabi and the martyrs of 1976. We must use the example they set to inspire all our cadres and members to dedicate themselves to the achievement of the goals of the national democratic revolution, in the same way that Joe Gqabi and the youth of 1976 dedicated their lives to the defeat of apartheid tyranny.”
Properly to pay tribute to the martyrs of 1976 therefore means that we must indeed focus on the central strategic task of the achievement of the goals of the national democratic revolution. As Nelson Mandela said, one of these goals is youth empowerment and development.
As we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the historic Soweto Uprising, our movement therefore pledges to our youth and all our people that nothing will divert us from the relentless pursuit of the goals of the national democratic revolution, as nothing diverted us from the struggle to defeat white minority rule. Long live the memory of the June 16 martyrs!
President Thabo Mbeki, June 16, 2006
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