Youth Day

The association of Afrikaans with apartheid caused huge problems when around 20,000 high school students begun to protest in the streets of Soweto on 16^th June 1976 in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the standard language of instruction in schools. Police responded with tear gas and live bullets and the occasion is commemorated today by a South African national holiday, Youth day, which honors all the hundreds of young people who lost their lives in the struggle against Apartheid. Back in August last year when I first arrived in South Africa, I visited the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg and it gave me a much better sense of the scale of the issues associated with apartheid and a greater understanding of the country’s past. Here at Thembelihle we joined the rest of the country and celebrated Youth Day with readings of the event to educate the kids and a celebration of young people just like them with music, singing and dancing followed by treats in the classroom. To the amusement of the children, all the staff agreed to dress in school uniform for the whole day…a commitment which ended up rather embarrassing as we were invited to a prayer session for a funeral in a rural village in the afternoon…BUT, I managed to fit into one of my students’ uniform and got the good ol’ piggy tails out!
A few days later, we were invited to another Youth Day celebration in Mthatha which saw children for various children’s homes come together to celebrate the day. Being the only adult representative of Thembelihle, I was invited to sit up on stage in front of hundreds of people for the 6 hour duration of the event. I gave a speech on Thembelihle to raise awareness of the home, but unfortunately the translator didn’t really understand what I was saying, so I’m not sure how much the audience understood! Being the only white person there I drew in a lot of attention and was prompted by both the organisers and the crowd to dance (on my own!!!) in front of everyone, to which I insisted I couldn’t dance! Ahh!