Antoinette Sithole (left), sister of Hector Pieterson, greets a fellow veteran of the June 16, 1976 Soweto Uprising, at the launch of “Finishing What Was Started”, an event reflecting on the legacy of the June 1976 generation and a call to action for today’s youth, at the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto on April 30, 2026.
Dr. Reneva Fourie
Half a century has passed since the 1976 student uprisings against compulsory Afrikaans and inferior education in schools.
State security forces killed hundreds of young people, the most well-known of whom was twelve-year-old Hector Pieterson. That generation of youth, together with the youth of the 1980s, played a significant role in the broader struggle that contributed to the end of apartheid.
Today, a different form of subjugation endures. The earlier systems of pass laws and race-based job reservations have been replaced by an economy that systematically excludes young people from productive life.
