Conclusion: Consequences -- Bibliography -- Index

The Soweto uprising was a true turning point in South Africa’s history. Even to contemporaries, it seemed to mark the beginning of the end of apartheid. This compelling book examines both the underlying causes and the immediate factors that led to this watershed event. It looks at the crucial roles of Black Consciousness ideology and nascent school-based organizations in shaping the character and form of the revolt. What began as a peaceful and coordinated demonstration rapidly turned into a violent protest when police opened fire on students. This short history explains the uprising and its aftermath from the perspective of its main participants, the youth, by drawing on a rich body of oral histories.

Originally published in 1968, this volume traces the history and growth of Apartheid in South Africa. The acts which enforced Apartheid – the Group Areas Act, Population and Registration Act are given in full. The book also includes documents which reflected reaction to these measures: Parliamentary debates, newspaper reports and policy statements by the leading political parties and religious denominations. The documents are headed by a full historical and analytical introduction.

The young black activists whose rejection of their parents' complacency led to the 1976 Soweto uprising and the eventual demise of apartheid are part of a long tradition of generational conflict in South Africa. In Blood from Your Children, Benedict Carton traces this intense challenge to an extraordinary and pivotal episode a century ago that bitterly divided families along generational lines. Facing a series of ecological disasters that crippled agriculture in the 1890s, African youths in colonial Natal and Zululand perceived their fathers' struggle to meet increased colonial demands as an act of betrayal. Young people engaged more frequently in premarital sex, while young men sparked widespread gang fights, and young women rejected traditional filial and marital obligations. In 1906, after the imposition of an onerous head tax on young men, this domestic turmoil exploded into an armed uprising known as Bambatha's Rebellion. The young men sought revenge by attacking both the African patriarchs whose apparent accomodation they considered traitorous and the colonial troops dispatched to quell the violence. After the Natal forces crushed the insurrection, some captured rebels faced trial for treason under martial law. Often, their fathers testified against them. While the military intervention eventually caused many more African youths to seek work in the mines, thus defusing generational turmoil, others moved to industrial centers in the wake of the uprising. These young people formed the vanguard of insurgent political groups that continue to play an important role in South African urban life. Through his lively and thorough presentation of the forces at work in Bambatha's Rebellion, Benedict Carton brings a fresh understanding to the tragic role of defiant youth and generational rivalry in African resistance.

Looking at anti-apartheid as part of the history of present global politics, this book provides the first comparative analysis of different sections of the transnational anti-apartheid movement. The author emphasizes the importance of a historical perspective on political cultures, social movements, and global civil society.

It’s 1976 in South Africa. In the black township of Soweto, Zanele works as a nightclub singer and is plotting against the apartheid government. Her best friend Thabo, schoolboy turned gang member, has troubles of his own--a deal gone wrong and some powerful enemies. Across the bridge, in the wealthy white suburbs, Jack plans to spend his last days in Johannesburg burning miles on his beat-up Mustang--until he meets Zanele. Working in her father's shop, Meena finds a packet of banned pamphlets. A series of chance meetings sets off a chain of events--a failed plot, a murdered teacher, a forbidden love and a growing student movement that sweeps across the country like a blazing fire. When Morning Comes is a part of the Duckbill Not Our War series. The NOW series deals with children growing up in times of conflict--powerless, vulnerable, and yet, against all odds, brave and hopeful of a better future.

Perfect for readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, a perceptive and searing look at Apartheid-era South Africa, told through one unique family brought together by tragedy. Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a ten-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robin’s parents are left dead and Beauty’s daughter goes missing. After Robin is sent to live with her loving but irresponsible aunt, Beauty is hired to care for Robin while continuing the search for her daughter. In Beauty, Robin finds the security and family that she craves, and the two forge an inextricable bond through their deep personal losses. But Robin knows that if Beauty finds her daughter, Robin could lose her new caretaker forever, so she makes a desperate decision with devastating consequences. Her quest to make amends and find redemption is a journey of self-discovery in which she learns the harsh truths of the society that once promised her protection. Told through Beauty and Robin's alternating perspectives, the interwoven narratives create a rich and complex tapestry of the emotions and tensions at the heart of Apartheid-era South Africa. Hum If You Don’t Know the Words is a beautifully rendered look at loss, racism, and the creation of family.

This book explores the student discontent a year after the start of the 2015 South African #FeesMustFall revolt #FeesMustFall, the student revolt that began in October 2015, was an uprising against lack of access to, and financial exclusion from, higher education in South Africa. More broadly, it radically questioned the socio-political dispensation resulting from the 1994 social pact between big business, the ruling elite and the liberation movement. The 2015 revolt links to national and international youth struggles of the recent past and is informed by black consciousness politics and social movements of the international left. Yet, its objectives are more complex than those of earlier struggles. The student movement has challenged the hierarchical, top-down leadership system of university management and it’s ‘double speak’ of professing to act in workers’ and students’ interests yet entrenching a regressive system for control and governance. University managements, while on one level amenable to change, have also co-opted students into their ranks to create co-responsibility for the highly bureaucratised university financial aid that stands in the way of their social revolution. This book maps the contours of student discontent a year after the start of the #FeesMustFall revolt. Student voices dissect colonialism, improper compromises by the founders of democratic South Africa, feminism, worker rights and meaningful education. In-depth assessments by prominent scholars reflect on the complexities of student activism, its impact on national and university governance, and offer provocative analyses of the power of the revolt.