Coming to terms with the past: Soweto, June 16th 1976: Gary Baines explains that the ANC government has institutionalized memories of the Soweto uprising in its efforts to build a new national identity in South Africa.(African National Congress )

ON JUNE 16TH, 1976, THE SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE opened fire on a mass march of school students from Soweto, a township southwest of Johannesburg, killing at least twenty-three. What had begun as a peaceful demonstration quickly escalated into a revolt characterized by attacks on symbols of state power in black townships. The Soweto uprising proved to be a watershed in the demise of the apartheid regime.

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 had given responsibility for the education of all school-going blacks to the Bantu Education Department, part of the Department of Native Affairs, ...

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