Essay About Youth Day

Youth day June 16th

Youth Day is a National holiday and is celebrated on June the 16th

Since 1991 The Day of the African Child has been celebrated.

This was first initiated by the OAU Organisation of African Unity.

It honours those who participated in the Soweto Uprising in 1976 on that day.

Youth Day in South Africa commemorates the Soweto Uprising in the country.

The grounds of the movement was due to the Afrikaans language been made compulsory in schools.

Critical analysis The June 16 1976 Uprising that began in Soweto and spread countrywide profoundly changed the socio-political landscape in South Africa. Events that triggered the uprising can be traced back to policies of the Apartheid government that resulted in the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953. The rise of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and the formation of South African Students Organisation (SASO) raised the political consciousness of many students while others joined the wave of anti-Apartheid sentiment within the student community. When the language of Afrikaans alongside English was made compulsory as a medium of instruction in schools in 1974, black students began mobilizing themselves. On 16 June 1976 between 3000 and 10 000 students mobilized by the South African Students Movement's Action Committee supported by the BCM marched peacefully to

Thus, Soweto as a "turning point" or as "the beginning of the end of apartheid" unmoors it from its historical roots (continuities and discontinuities) and obscures its internal inconsistencies and ambiguities, so eloquently described in Sifiso Ndlovu's Counter-memories of June 1976