Monday June 16, 2008

Happy Youth Day! In celebration of Youth Day, we took about 15 of the older youth at the center to the Johannesburg Stadium. The youth of South Africa was invited to come to the stadium for a free concert and to hear some of the country’s leaders come and speak in remembrance of June 16, 1976. On this day, of the youth of Soweto Township took to the streets and protested the use of Afrikaans as the medium of education in schools. As the children were marching, police officers opened fire, killing 23 and wounding hundreds protesters. It was a cowardly act indeed on the part of the apartheid South Africa Police. Now the ANC government has made June 16 a national holiday to remind the youth of the sacrifices of those in the past, and to keep the spirit of youth empowerment alive. What I witnessed today, however, would suggest that Youth Day has become something else entirely in the minds of young people in South Africa.

The kids showed up to the center at around 9am, and Rachel and I bought them a simple breakfast of fatcakes from a woman down the street. When everyone was together we headed down to the taxi rank to wait for the free bus provided by the government that would take us to Johannesburg. A few minutes later a huge orange bus pulled up and people started running toward it. Zonkizizwe was the last stop, as the bus had already stopped in Voslorus, Zonkizizwe II, Magagula Heights and other nearby townships. We tried to keep our kids together as we were pushing our way onto the bus, but it was impossible. We squeezed onto the standing room only, overly packed bus, and were off. When we got to Johannesburg we followed the huge crowds to Johannesburg Stadium. People were toyi-toying (a form of protest dance) through the streets and some of our kids started to join in. One of the girls, Nomalanga pulled me to her and told me to try the toyi-toyi, so I did. After pushing our way through the crowd we were finally into the gates of Johannesburg Stadium and sat down as group.

The commemoration started with Nkosi Sikelel ‘iAfrika, the national anthem of South Africa. The first part is in Zulu, the second in Afrikaans, and the third in English. Our kids knew the words to all three parts, but I stopped after the Zulu. The anthem was followed by a string of uninteresting speakers who gave their speeches entirely in English. I say they were uninteresting not because what they had to say wasn’t important, but because none of the youth seemed to be engaged in what they were saying. They were giving their speeches entirely in English, without any sort of written or oral translation into any of the other 11 official languages of South Africa. I couldn’t understand why they would do that, since English is only the third most commonly spoken language in the country. Though English is the one language that most South Africans have in common, I think that there should have been big screens with translations into Zulu, Sesotho, Xhosa, Venda, Tswana, and others in order for people to truly understand what was being said about the sacrifices of those brave youths in 1976. The only concession they made to people was having people who could sign the speeches available in one area of the stadium. Many of the youth there mostly likely couldn’t understand the English, so I don’t blame them for not being engaged. At times the sound was so poor it was hard for me, someone who speaks English as a first language to understand what was going on. In the future, the government should consider making future Youth Day celebrations more accommodating to the people attending.

After the speakers, the true nature of Youth Day came out. The stage was cleared of politicians and leaders and filled with various performers for the concert portion of the celebration. The stadium grounds were opened up and everyone started pouring onto it. For the sake of keeping everyone together, we asked the youth from the center to stay in the stands. The youth on the grounds went crazy, throwing water satchels at one another and running around. It was then that I realized that the majority of people didn’t come here to remember what happened in 1976… they came to the stadium to run amok and act though they were at a carnival. It was highly disappointing to me to witness that kind of behavior, so degrading to the memory of all those wounded or killed in the Soweto uprising.

For the most part, I understand the various reasons why Youth Day has become a failure in South Africa-- it just hurts to see it in person. I can kind of compare it to how many Americans view holidays such as Labor Day. Not many people understand the history of why we have the holiday, therefore they do not take it seriously and then mindlessly take advantage of the day off of work or school. I do not entirely blame the youth for their behavior at Johannesburg Stadium, but individuals must start taking responsibility for their own actions. They must start talking about apartheid, and how even though it is not the way of the government now, there are still many social, economic, and political disparities left behind from it today. From what I have been able to observe, the ills of apartheid are only briefly touched in schools. The older generations who can remember apartheid are reluctant to talk about it for fear of reliving the past, something the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (and the government that supported it) said must be forgotten about and buried. People must learn what they can about their history, work toward changing the mistakes of the past, and progressing forward. A country cannot simply ignore what has happened in its history and expect true democracy and unity to manifest—not when the people are still suffering from the gaping wounds of the past. If any country is in need of the teachings of Sankofa, South Africa is the one.