PALESA MORUDU: Generation 2020: Is the human race becoming human?
Something unprecedented is happening as waves of people in the US protest against age-old racism
Tuesday marked 44 years since young people in SA took to the streets and changed the world. Murphy Morobe, leader of the 1976 Soweto uprising, has often remarked that when students at Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto decided to protest against Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in apartheid education on June 16, they had no idea they would make history.
The apartheid government responded with typical brute force, killing dozens of schoolchildren in the streets of Soweto on that day. This bloody massacre engulfed the whole country in protest. Months later, the children moved to join the liberation movement in neighbouring countries. Just over a decade later, after a bitter internal conflict, the apartheid government was forced to the negotiating table, paving the way for a democratic SA in 1994. This was in no small way due to this generation of young people who shouted black power to the most powerful government on the African continent at the time...
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