South Africa is celebrating Youth Day today: Here are 4 similarities between the Soweto Uprising and the Anglophone Conflict
By Ngala Hansel
On the 16th of June 1976, about 700 people lay dead in the township of Soweto, just outside the mineral-rich city of Johannesburg. Most of them were Black African students. They had gathered to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans, a Dutch-derived language that was spoken strictly in South Africa and had come to be associated with the very fabric of apartheid.
The students demanded more recognition of their own languages which they saw as representative of them, their values and customs.
In total, 3 907 people were injured. The apartheid police were responsible for 2 389 injuries.
Both the death and inquiry figures were disputed by various sources as being too low.
5 980 were arrested for offenses related to resistance in the townships.
Within four months of the Soweto Uprising, 160 African communities all over South Africa were involved in resistance.
Following the end of apartheid in 1994, the democratic government of South Africa chose June 16 as Youth Day and the African Union declared the day the Day of the African Child to celebrate not just the youth who died in Soweto in 1976, but celebrate children all over the African continent.
Below are four similarities between the Soweto Uprising and the Anglophone Crisis:
- Protesting the use of a language seen as a tool of oppression
In South Africa, Black students saw the imposition of Afrikaans on them as yet another tactic by the apartheid government to culturally subjugate them and make them feel inferior. The apartheid government simply decreed that Afrikaans was now going to be the medium of instruction in all Black African schools. This did not sit well with the African students who protested against the proposed law and most of them paid a heavy price for it with their lives.
In November 2016, Anglophones in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest Regions (formerly Southern Cameroons), similarly protested against the assignment of French-speaking teachers by the central government in Yaounde. Anglophones saw the assignment of Francophone teachers as a disregard of their own cultures and values which were more English, having previously adopted a British style of education, norms, etc. In fact, cars in the Southern Cameroons were driven on the right (as is currently the case in South Africa) but after the merger with French Cameroon, that was done away with.
- The world began to notice
The Soweto Uprising, the police response, and the protests that followed led to greater international exposure, and censure, for the South African government and its policy of apartheid. Images of the murdered students in Soweto were splashed on the front pages of newspapers all over the world.
- Freedom of assembly and expression, not given
While apartheid has since ended in South Africa and freedom of assembly and freedom of expression are guaranteed in the country’s constitution, this was not the case under apartheid. Usually, Black people gathering to protest were risking their very lives. The Soweto Uprising demonstrated this.
In the case of Cameroon, the Governor of the SW region made inflammatory remarks on September 22nd, 2017; referring to Anglophones as “dogs” because the population was heeding calls from separatist leaders to partake in protests against the government’s handling of the crisis in the region. He said the government would not hesitate to visit the fullest force of the law on these dogs, a clear attempt to curtail freedom of peaceful assembly.
- A burning desire for freedom
The Soweto Uprising was a clear example of a people longing for freedom. A people wanting to be heard, be seen, and be treated with dignity. They wanted to be free from the shackles of apartheid, free to study in the language or languages they felt most comfortable with – and in this case, that language was English and their native languages and not Afrikaans.
Besides using language as a tool of oppression, Black Africans were required to carry a passbook on them at all times. Without this passbook, they couldn’t enter or exit the cities where they usually went to work in menial jobs for meager pay.
The similarity is quite striking in Cameroon too. Cameroon’s police treat national identity (ID) cards like sacred texts. People in the Anglophone Regions are often harassed, beaten, locked up, or charged heavy fines when found to not be in possession of ID cards or if found to be with expired ID cards.
So while the Soweto Uprising occurred 46 years ago, the wounds of that painful day are still very fresh in the minds of those who lived through that dark, gloomy day. The Soweto Uprising is over, apartheid is over but the Anglophone Crisis is not. People are still being oppressed, jailed, and killed. Begging to be seen, begging to be heard. Begging for the world to save them.
