Today as we commemorate the 37th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, on our national holiday, Youth Day, an iconic image of an emotional school girl and young man running while carrying a motionless young Hector Zolile Pitso comes to mind. The pain and anguish, which is clearly expressed in the image has made it one of the most significant images of South Africa's liberation struggle. This famous image of a 12 year old youth, became the face of the over 150 youth killed during the Soweto uprising and exposed the brutality of the apartheid regime. It should be equally disturbing that in this symbolic image of Hector, he bears the name Hector Pieterson. The caption is not inaccurate, because his name was changed to Hector Pieterson by his father in order for him to be regarded as coloured and avoid being termed black by the apartheid regime. This name change, as disturbing as it is, was done to enable Hector more basic rights and opportunities at the time. Hector Pitso would be turning 50 this year, our imagination can go wild about where he’d be or what he would be doing now, but reality brings us back to the tragic image of his last moments as Hector Pieterson. Images of the Soweto uprising like that of Hector, recorded the shocking brutality of the apartheid police, should be enough to ensure that any honest historian report that South Africa’s freedom was hard fought for. Sadly in our political discourse we have seen a new tendency, which aims to exaggerate the role of the likes of Helen Suzman, De Klerk, the white minority, liberals and even go so far as to present Margaret Thatcher as supportive of South Africa’s liberation. It is clear that these desperate political opportunists aim to rewrite history, to paint themselves as revolutionary liberators who generously delivered freedom to the working class black majority as “friends of Comrade Nelson Mandela”. There are even some who will claim that freedom was a gift, a selfless act of kindness by the peaceful Noble peace prize awardee FW De Klerk. We must not allow youth to be misled the by these attempts to white-wash South Africa’s liberation struggle. The truth, as anti-apartheid activists will attest, is that even the De Klerk regime sent Father Micheal Lapsley a letter bomb, resulting in him loosing both hands, as late as 1990.
History must reflect the truth and must be known, especially by the youth. There was no gift of freedom; instead it was the people of South Africa (with many youth at the forefront) that fought for and won their and our freedom. It is an undisputed truth that the ANC was the main political force that carried the aspirations of the masses and that the ANC was and is a non-racial party. While it is also true that there were indeed white people who risked their lives to assist in the fight for freedom, the majority of white people supported apartheid at the time. The apartheid government’s attempt to force the majority to accept education in Afrikaans, a language that they did not understand, was an act of absolute cruelty. Additionally Hector Zolile Pitso’s name change to that of “Pieterson”, in order to “enjoy a better future”, is a sober reminder to South Africans at large that there was a time when the majority of the ruling white South African minority was willing to allow the absolute racial oppression of the majority. It took the youth, along with unions and mass movements to make South Africa “ungovernable” while under minority undemocratic rule, to make apartheid unsustainable. The Soweto uprisings served as a turning point in South African history- indeed the youth were possibly the most important players in the liberation struggle. Today the majority of South African youth are still experiencing poverty and hardship; it is for this reason that they will not allow the democratic gains they have made to remain political and not economic. No amount of sugarcoating, whitewashing or selective presentation of the people’s liberation will convince the majority to accept poverty and gross inequality. No economist or storyteller will convince the youth to accept the huge racial disparity and white domination of our economy. We can never achieve equal opportunity without effective redistribution programs of the country’s wealth. As youth we cannot and will not allow for an economy with 79.6 percent of top jobs being held by the white minority, like is the case in the Western Cape. It is however extremely important to ensure that while we demand black empowerment and economic transformation; we encourage our youth to make their demands in a dignified manner. Equally, when we make necessary moves to empower the masses, by putting economic transformation on the agenda, we must ensure that we promote a peaceful non-racial society. As demands for transformation grow we must encourage youth to distinguish between the racist, the opportunist and honest activists demanding a transfer of the economy from a privileged white minority to the majority. We must ensure that messages demanding a more equal society must also be ones of human rights, peace, stability, unity and harmony. While we support the demands of the youth for redistribution, we need to equally encourage youth to take advantage of opportunities available to them such as education and encourage them to strive towards obtaining qualifications that we will need to build South Africa. Youth leaders need to promote education as one of the meaningful methods of achieving economic empowerment. Let us remember that majority rule was never voluntarily handed to the masses; human rights and dignity were not a gift, but rather were won through hard struggle. Let’s recognize that redistribution of wealth will also face huge resistance, not only from privileged minorities, but also by those who loot the economy while claiming to be advocates of economic freedom. Honest redistribution of wealth is necessary for the good of all South Africans and must be championed; it must be achieved in a peaceful, dignified and unifying manor. We must also equally ensure that we don’t allow easy, cheap, racist and hateful rhetoric to be used by populist opportunists to highjack the people’s plight, such tactics merely discredit the collective wisdom of our people. Lets try to improve South Africa and let’s doing so with respect and dignity for Hector Zolile Pitso, and all those who died for the freedoms we are able to enjoy today. Sent from my iPhone -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
