#16june1976
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mandelasmf.bsky.social
We remember the Soweto children shot down by police on 16June1976 at a mammoth peaceful protest, and the 1000 others killed in the resulting year-long uprising. It mobilised a generation. On the 10th anniversary in 1986 the Glasgow home of the apartheid Consulate was renamed Nelson Mandela Place.
June 16, 2025 at 10:32 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 560

#SowetoDay #16June1976
THE CHILDREN OF SOWETO by Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane (1982) "It was a chilly Wednesday morning in the middle of June. […] Looking back in time, we can usually find the exact moment when a new epoch began, when it happened it felt just like any other day. Such was that fateful morning in the middle of June. […] We came out demonstrating on a cold, wintry morning. But the authorities wouldn't have it. They set police dogs on us. They panel-beat us with batons. They sprayed us with teargas. They came out shooting. Army tanks roared down the streets like angry hippos. The contest was too uneven. We retreated in panic, leaving the ground strewn with casualties from both sides. We couldn't match them stone to bullet." This important historical novel was first published in 1982 and later banned by the apartheid regime. It tells, with piercing authenticity, the story of the 1976 Soweto uprising. Mzamane has created a set of characters whose courage, humour, and imperfections fill the pages of this book and carry the reader forward on the rising tide of resistance.
June 16, 2025 at 10:53 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 561

#SowetoDay #16June1976
AMANDLA by Miriam Tlali (1980) "Youths rushed past carrying huge overflowing cardboard boxes full of cartons of cigarettes – Lexington, Rothmans, Consulate and other popular brands. They were smiling broadly and gesticulating, ignoring the questioning, watching crowds. 'Power! Amandla!' they yelled, thrusting their sinewy arms into the air. Others were stripped to the waist and wiping their sweating brows. 'Amandla!' the onlookers replied, laughing. Just as T was about to move down into the valley to take a closer look at what was going on, he heard the distant droning sound of an approaching flying machine. 'Helicopter!' someone shouted, pointing into the thick dark smoke which was now rising above the roofs of the shopping concourse. He heard the sound of shots and closed his eyes and listened. 'They're shooting!' someone screamed. The crowds broke up and scattered helter-skelter in all directions towards the nearby houses, some tumbling and falling or being trampled over in the stampede." Soweto, 1976 . . . people's lives are no longer their own, fused together in a moment of history. Each of Miriam Tlali's characters has a story to tell, a journey to take to the meeting place – outside the burning building, under the fury of the helicopter, among the mourners at the graveside. Out of the tumult comes the cry of a people Amandla!
June 16, 2025 at 12:14 PM
mwanostudio.bsky.social
It was important to do last year,it’s still important to do this year: celebrating #Africanchildday, to commemorate the Soweto uprising. #Knowledge is #power #✊🏿 This year four musicians from Ensemble Musikfabrik will be playing with us! It’s 50 years si ce 1976 by the way 🫶
#16june1976 #kinshasa
June 14, 2026 at 4:10 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 562

#SowetoDay #16June1976
A RIDE ON THE WHIRLWIND by Sipho Sepamla (1981) "In the late afternoon Soweto began to bend its neck under the mass of a grey cloud of smoke. Fires were crackling in each home; the chill in the air abroad made the long shadows invisible. Workers disembarked from trains only to rush to the comfort of their little homes. They found their hearts beat fast at the sight of kwela-kwelas. For the police patrolled Soweto as if a dignitary was expected. The vans criss-crossed the streets endlessly. There was a new sight in the ways of the cops: the camouflaged policeman. He moved with shoulders slouched, hands burdened by a heavy army rifle. He was a terror amidst the innocent presence of the ordinary dweller. The people called him the legalised terrorist: he bullied his way into the consciousness of the township dweller. But his arrogance was on several occasions reduced to particles of ridicule like sawdust in the wind." Sipho Sepamla (1932-2007), poet, playwright, and novelist, was born in Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, and trained as a teacher. His second novel, A RIDE ON THE WHIRLWIND, is set during the June 1976 uprising in Soweto, and provides a powerful and moving account of the tensions and turbulence, intrigue and confusion which enveloped the township and rocked South Africa. Cover illustration by Boniswa M. Rasekoala.
June 16, 2025 at 1:50 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
The Soweto uprisings were a turning point in our history. They exploded into a momentous event, leading to major repercussions that are still with us today.
▪️Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, 2017 [1998]

#SowetoDay #16June1976 #YouthDay ✊🏽
Extract from THE SOWETO UPRISINGS: COUNTER-MEMORIES OF JUNE 1976 by Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu (2017 [1998]) The exact details of what took place on 16 June 1976 – a day that marked the brutal death of schoolchildren like Hector Pieterson, Hastings Ndlovu, and others – remain highly contested more than 40 years after the event. This is despite the availability of first-hand eyewitness accounts and archival materials stored at various depots, repositories, and research institutions around South Africa. On Wednesday, 16 June 1976, parents working in nearby Johannesburg and towns in the East and the West Rand were unaware of the events taking place in their community that would catapult consciousness of the liberation struggle across the globe. An estimated crowd of 10 000 students were gathering in Orlando West, along Vilakazi Street, next to Phefeni Junior Secondary School (PJSS) and Orlando West High School to protest against Bantu Education in general and, specifically, the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in selected schools in Soweto. Township residents had long regarded education as a means of empowering their children and as such, students' grievances were allied against apartheid and other racially based government policies. As a result, students, teachers, and parents, as members of a given society and also as agents of change, were at the forefront of protest and challenge during the uprisings.
June 16, 2025 at 10:23 AM
davidalarsen.bsky.social
On June 16, 1976 Bongani Mnguni was walking his daughter to school in Soweto. Sensing momentous events were unfolding he went home, picked up his camera and began to document perhaps the pivotal moment in apartheid history: tinyurl.com/16June1976 #sowetouprising #africanpictures
On the morning of 16 June 1976, photographer Bongani Mnguni... - Google Arts & Culture
set out to walk his daughter to school in Orlando West, Soweto. Sensing something was unfolding, he returned home, picked up his camera and stepped into history.
artsandculture.google.com
June 14, 2026 at 5:09 PM