16 June, 1976

This is a little early for June 16 -- South Africa's "Youth Day" -- but this week I was substitute teaching for my mum. The students' assignment was to write a poem about 16 June, 1976. So I decided to do the assignment too! 16 June 1976 was the day thousands of South African students marched in protest of the Bantu Education system. Black students were forced to study a sub-standard curriculum and were taught in Afrikaans, the language that, to them, represented their oppressor. Young SA policemen shot unarmed students and ignited violent riots across the country.

Here is a token to those students, in particular Hector Pieterson (above) -- the first child known to have been killed in the June 16 violence.

[this poem should be read aloud....it needs to be vocalized!!]

16 June, 1976:

Amandhla! Amandhla! Amandhla!
Cry Freedom!
The cry, the cry, the cry
becomes a scream
The scream becomes a yell
How can we, how can we
escape from this hell?

Toyi, toyi, toyi, up and down, up and down
All the way through this Soweto town
Toyi, toyi, toyi, can we change, can we change
this system, this apartheid, that will us derange?

We shout, we yell, we fight, we sell
Our future for our past.

Our past we touch, but cannot reach
Our past we know, but cannot teach
Our past we touch, but cannot reach
Our past we know, but cannot teach
Our past, our past
Our past dictates our future.

Our future, what’s our future?
Our futures don’t exist.
How can we touch, how can we hold what it is we do not own?
How can we touch, how can we feel, what has not already grown?
How can we touch, how can we hold, what it is we do not own?
How can we touch, how can we hold what has not already grown?

Our future
Our life
Our future
Our hell.

June 16, it came and went,
How much young hope, blood was spent?
Dreams poured, flooding down the streets
Streets filled with youth, lost, broken, bent.
Our hopes flowed with our shattered lives,
Our broken bodies, broken hearts,
They fled amongst our fleeing feet
Toyi toyi no more, this day is dead.

One shot killed Hector, hope and life
A generation died that night
A nation cut, slashed by a knife
A bloodbath, war-cry, battle, fight.

Where to SA? Where to from here?
A line drawn, ’76, that year
littered with blood, lost hope and fear
A line extends year after year.
’94, so bright a dawn,
A hope that was malformed, stillborn.

South Africa, South Africa
Amandhla! shout or cry no more
No more let children live in screams
And live to grow their adult dreams.

South Africa, South Africa
Free us from our unseemly past
“Let freedom reign” and no more pain
Follow us; please let it last.