'How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.' - ANNE FRANK

This week marks the anniversary of the June 16 1976 youth uprising: the immediate cause of the uprising was because of a directive from the Bantu Education Department that Afrikaans had to be used on an equal basis with English as one of the languages of instruction in all secondary schools. What followed was encapsulated by Sam Nzima's iconic photograph of Hector Pieterson being carried away from the conflict after he had been shot.

A dying Hector Pieterson being carried by another student while his sister runs alongside.
(Photo: Sam Nzima)

That the event was a tragedy is undeniable. But I did not just want to pay tribute to th ose students who lost their lives on that day, or to remember the families who still mourn for them. I wished to salute and to acknowledge all those young people who over the years have taken their future into their own hands and by so doing have taught me about courage and resilience and about the optimism that only the young have. Some may call it foolhardiness or ignorance - be that as it may, the fact remains that student protest is woven into the social fabric of cultures across the world and much has been achieved because of them.

I was teaching South African protest poetry to my grade 11 class today and was reminded of Don Mattera’s poem Let the children decide.

Let us halt this quibbling
Of reform and racial preservation

Saying who belongs to which nation

Students running from soldiers' bullets during the June 16 uprising
(Photo: Peter Magubane)

And let the children decide

It is their world

Let us burn our uniforms

Of old scars and grievances

And call back our spent dreams

And the relics of crass tradition

That hang on our malignant hearts

And let the children decide

For it IS their world ...

Mattera wrote the poem in 1966 and ten years later the children did indeed decide.

But I would be remiss if I did not speak about other student protests that have resonated across the world.

In 1989 a pro-Democracy movement was led by students in Beijing in China. The movement revealed deep splits in the Chinese Communist party and received significant support, eventually spreading to 400 cities across the country. The protesters were based in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing and were peacefully calling for political and economic reform: in response the Chinese authorities declared martial law and used overwhelming force to repress the demonstrations. Military units were brought in and unarmed protesters and civilians were killed en masse. The Chinese government has never released any comments regarding the incident and all mention of the protest remains banned by authorities to the present day. The exact number of deaths has never been revealed but estimates run into the thousands.

A lone student faces a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square

 Coincidentally this event also occurred in June only in this instance it was on 4 June.

On May 4 students at Kent State University in Ohio gathered to protest against President Richard Nixon’s plans to send a further 150 000 soldiers into Cambodia, Vietnam. The war was already an unpopular one and outrage at Nixon’s announcement spread throughout America. The governor of Ohio sent 900 National Guardsmen to Kent State and 28 of them opened fire on the students, killing four and wounding nine. A similar incident occurred 10 days later at Jackson State University where two students were killed and a further nine injured.

Pullitzer Award winning photograph of the Kent State shootings

In 1957 nine black students enrolled at a previously all white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. On the first day of school they were met by angry mobs of white people as well as the Arkansas National Guard trying to prevent them from entering the school. The refusal of the students to back down and surrender to those who tried to intimidate them led to President Eisenhower having the students escorted into school by federal troops. The incident was a landmark in the Civil Rights movement.

White protesters attempt to stop students attending Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas

And then there are those wonderful people who have stood alone in protest and whose courage has defied understanding. Difficult enough to do when you are a Ghandi or a Nelson Mandela, but when Malala Yousafazi at the age of 15 defied the Taliban in Pakistan she sent an unparalleled message of defiance. In response to her demands that girls be given the right to an education she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman but survived and is the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Student marches, rallies and boycotts have resulted in clashes with governments and with the police, but they have also resulted in creating public awareness and outrage against social, political and economic injustices. There are many who decry the violence and the senseless destruction of property and yes, such actions on many occasions become self-defeating and appear to be senseless and wanton acts lacking in meaning and whose only purpose is to cause havoc. But I find it remarkable that what so many of these student protests highlight is the failure of education systems. It is not only in South Africa that students are protesting against the rising costs of education: such demonstrations have occurred, and are occurring, across the world including such countries as Chile, Egypt, Mexico, Greece, the USA and Pakistan to name but a few. 

Student protest march calling for the abolition of tuition fees in Westminster, London

And so I have to ask: on who else can students rely but themselves when authorities drag their heels and make promises they have no intention of keeping? Governments seem to hope that by the time the red tape of bureaucracy has been cut that students will have grown tired of waiting and move on. But they forget that there will always be students and that they will always protest and we can learn much from their tenacity and from their fearlessness.

To all my students, past and present, I salute you.