Conditions that Politicized Bantu Schools
The event the triggered the June 16, 1976 Soweto uprising was a decree requiring that all Bantu schools teach their subjects in Afrikaans (the language of the original Dutch settlers of South Africa), rather than English. Unlike their parents, students in Soweto and the other townships were already highly politicized, owing to the atrocious conditions in the Bantu schools. While education in which schools was free, black parents were charged 51 rand a year (a half month's salary) The Bantu schools were also incredibly overcrowded, with sixty or more students per class and teachers who often had no education qualifications.
In 1968, students in the black townships formed the African Students Movement to address these atrocious conditions. In 1972, they affiliated with the South African Students Organization (which arose out of the Black Consciousness movement at black universities).
The prelude to the June 16 uprising was a classroom boycott in early June of seventh and eight graders at Orlando West Primary School. Seven other Soweto schools immediately joined the boycott. Students at Naledi High School demanded to speak to the regional director of education. Instead the government sent out the Police Special Branch, who were forced to lock themselves in the principal's office while the students rioted and overturned their cars.
On Sunday June 13th, 400 students met in Orland (hard to imagine without cellphones Facebook or Twitter) to call for a mass boycott and demonstration June 16th. They also made a pact not to inform their parents, who they believed would try to stop them.
On June 16, fifteen to twenty thousand students age 10-20 in school uniform met at Orlando West Secondary school to march to the stadium. The police formed a line in front of them. When the students refused to disperse, even after the police fired tear gas and set dogs on them, the police opened fire, killing several students. The other students went wild, throwing rocks and bottles at the police and setting fire to all symbols of apartheid -- government buildings, liquor stores, beer halls and trucks, buses and cars belonging to white businesses.
Where Deadly Police Force Fails
The next morning rioting spread to Alexandria township. After three days, the South African government shut down the Soweto and Alexandria schools, as rioting spread to other townships and to Pretoria, Durban and Capetown with "colored" (mixed race) and Indian students also joining the rebellion. The police were totally unable to quell the rioters, even with force, owing to the students' greater numbers and their total disregard for their own safety. When rioting was suppressed in one area, it flared up in another. It took sixteen months for the student riots to die down, in October 1977.
The Soweto riots heralded in the start of mass popular resistance to apartheid. Prior to 1976, resistance was limited to sporadic acts of sabotage by the African National Congress (the ANC had operated along strictly non-violent principles prior to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre).
The Aftermath
The Soweto uprising won major concessions from the South African government: Bantu school principles were allowed to choose the language of instruction; Pretoria opened more schools and teacher training colleges in the townships; urban black were given permanent status as city dwellers; and the law was repealed that banned blacks from owning business in the townships.
Despite these concessions, thousands of students who participated in the riots left school and went into exile in neighboring countries, where they obtained military training. They eventually filtered back into South Africa to working for the African National Congress committing acts of sabotage.
Teenagers in the First Intifada
Like the 1976 Soweto uprising, the teenagers who sparked the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987 were influenced by a similar breakdown in parental authority, though for different reasons. From 1967, when Israel first seized the Gaza strip from Egypt, until the 1987 Intifada, Gaza, which has always been much poorer than the West Bank, was little more than a cluster of refugee camps. This meant there was no central authority, other than the soldiers from the Israel Defense Force (IDF), who maintained order. According to a recent study by EuroMed Youth (http://www.euromedyouth.net/IMG/pdf/07-EuroMedJeunesse-Etude_PALESTINE.pdf), the lack of central authority laid the groundwork for the breakdown of parental authority. Because civil society broke down following Gaza's separation from Egypt, it was up to young people, who freely intermingled in schools, universities and the streets to create the social/political arena in which intellectual debate could occur. In 1987, Yasar Arafat and the other Palestinian resistance leaders in the PLO -- who would later assume this role -- were still in exile.
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