On this day in 1976, the Soweto Uprising began in South Africa after the government mandated that Afrikaans be taught in school, leading to demonstrations by more than 20,000 black schoolchildren, hundreds of whom were killed by police.
The Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 mandated all black schools to use Afrikaans and English in equal amounts as languages of instruction. Afrikaans was strongly associated with apartheid (prominent anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu called it “the language of the oppressor”), and this decree was widely resented.
At first, resistance to the measure was scattered - on April 30th, the students of Orlando West Junior School went on strike, and other schools began to follow suit. Students eventually formed an Action Committee, later known as the Soweto Students’ Representative Council, which organized a mass meeting on June 13th to develop a cohesive strategy of protest.
On the morning on June 16th, 10,000-20,000 students walked out of their schools to a mass rally, carrying signs reading “Down with Afrikaans”, “Viva Azania”, and “If we must do Afrikaans, Vorster must do Zulu”.
The protest turned violent after students killed a trained dog that the police had sicced on them, causing the police to open fire. Among the first students to be murdered were the 15-year-old Hastings Ndlovu and the 12-year-old Hector Pieterson (shown, photo by Sam Nzima).
Social reformer Dr. Melville Edelstein was beaten to death by the mob, a sign around his neck proclaiming, “Beware Afrikaans is the most dangerous drug for our future”. 23 people died on the first day in Soweto, and hundreds more were killed in the following weeks.
Emergency clinics were swamped with injured and bloody children. Police requested for the hospital to provide a list of all victims with bullet wounds, however the doctors refused, recording bullet wounds as abscesses.
The violence led to widespread riots and sympathy protests throughout South Africa, including white students from the University of the Witwatersrand. In remembrance of these events, June 16th is now a public holiday in South Africa known as Youth Day.
1976 Soweto Uprising: Youth rebellion and the burning desire for freedom
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Sorry for the late mega nerds, currently going through a small crisis, will update later
Meanwhile idk read absolute batman its good
Thanks cowbee
No problem, I wish you the best of luck with resolving whatever it is that’s troubling you.
Sorry to hear that. Hope everything turns out okay.
Living through the 3rd year of WW3 and seeing things escalate while having to go to work and function as a normal human being is completely absurd. How the fuck does everyone continue to live
Real Children of Men hours.
My department has lost half its engineers in the last 6 months to resignations. Three had previously complained about the senior making unprofessional and inappropriate comments. the senior was kept on and now most of our team is gone. Nothing’s ever getting done around here now
nO oNe wAnTS tO WoRK anYMoRe
One of the most unintentionally funny things that happened to me was when I was opening up to a partner about my struggles with addiction. Partner asked if I’d ever “Foured” drugs. I had no idea what they meant by that, and they didn’t have the drug literacy to even guess what it meant. Then it hit me the next day when I was at work. IV. Four.
I helped this unhoused dude take all his stuff up this steep hill, at the top we were asked if we wanted to buy any spit. As near as I could tell, it was supposed to be a drug but I still dont know if she meant literal spit or some kind of drug called spit
That sounds like the sort of linguistic evolution you’d find in post-apocalypse or SF writing. Love it.
New York Crimes headline rn
I’ll give you my honest reaction: I’m impressed. That’s so much spin.
Thinking about that time Noah Kulwin was on Trueanon talking about how he was thinking of writing a book just on the history of the evil the NYT carried water for throughout its history, and that the cover would be dripping with blood.
What the hell is wrong with American elections?? The way I see Americans talk about the New York Mayoral election makes it seem like it’s happening next week. But that shit isn’t untill November?? Wait until October to start your campaign dawg
The Democratic primary for the mayoral election is next week.
They need to leave enough time between primaries and the actual election for ratfucking in the case the democrats don’t get their preferred candidate.
It’s because of the primaries next week, which is the election within the Democratic Party to decide their nominee for the actual election
somehow the entire US congress
Yup, it was layoffs today. Thankfully I survived them. Apparently we’re losing contracts because of the trump admin cancelling shit.
walking down the embarcadero in SF at midnight with my friend coming home from the panchiko show and we walk across a group of 6-8 dudes in their 20s that I instantly clocked as programmers. As we near them, they were talking about playing the “penis” game but with the word “vinegar”
They proceeded to take turns shouting “vinegar” increasingly louder into the night and laughing their asses off from because they were “cleverly” saying the n-word
Fuck this city omg
started smoking weed again and skipping the gym for a couple weeks and i feel sad and depressed. who could possibly have seen this coming
same
Live footage of us moving to a new megathread:
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I’ve been struggling with moderate alcoholism for the past several months, with many attempts to quit or cut back. I’m currently 70 hours sober, and I’m trying to use alcohol-free sparkling water and Street Fighter to establish new habits. I suck at fighting games, but I’ve been wanting to pick up a new hobby and the newest game in the series is pretty fun.
Congratulations! You can do it! You already are doing it! 👊💪
Thanks! The hardest part for me is not stopping to pick up a couple tallboys on my way home from work, but I managed to do it last night with little issue! If I can do it one night, I can do it again.
You’re very welcome, I’m proud of you! You absolutely can, but more importantly, you will.
Who ya playing?
Chun-Li and Cammy, while I’m getting re-acclimated to the controls. I like super agile baddies and lots of kicks, so I’ve been having a lot of fun with Cammy and her Hooligan combo.
You might like juri too then! Some of her punches are kicks even.
Hell yeah get it! I highly recommend the flavored Liquid Death cans, they are so good and are like 16 oz I think. Had one at a bar and it felt right
Nice, I’ll try one of those! Are they carbonated? Fizzy, bubbly drinks have been decent substitutes for hard seltzers in my experience.
They are! I’m pretty sure the flavored ones use real fruit juice but just a little bit, so it gives it a bit of a different mouth feel from regular bubble water. I think they were kinda made to be a beer alternative lol they are sold at quite a few bars and music venues that ive been to. Kinda spendy but I think they’re especially good if youre out with people who might be drinking ,the label kinda looks like a beer label too
Still recovering from feeling exhausted but I did my first workout in like 2 weeks
it is june 17 and stalin saved the world from fascism
me, looking around at all the fascism: “did he, though”
They’ll never forgive him for it
angery
