Phalane Motale Veteran Journalist
By Phalane Motale
Veteran Journalist
It was a normal winter Wednesday morning on 16 June 1976 when I was a Form 1 (also known as Standard 6 then and Grade 8 today) learner at the Vlakfontein Technical High School on the banks of the Moretele River which separates Mamelodi East and West.
At the time, there were only two high schools (Vlakfontein and Mamelodi) and one secondary school (Ribane Laka) in the entire Mamelodi, and they were all located within a 1km radius.
For those who don’t know, television was only officially introduced to South Africa on 05 January 1976.
Prior to this, our main source of news was via radio and most families could not afford to have a TV set which were most not in colour but black and white.
Even though the state-controlled SABC had a virtual monopoly on radio broadcasting, the government had already regarded television as a threat to Afrikaans and the Afrikaner volk that was giving prominence to English and creating unfair competition to the Afrikaans press.
Our school was different because its teaching staff comprised of up to 90 percent Whites of Afrikaner descent at the time. Our principal Ben Spies and his deputy “Flint” van der Merwe were already at the gate on that morning with guns to their hips.
A very unusual sight.
We were asked to directly go to our respective classes and not assemble in groups outside our classes as usual.
We obliged and could see that something was not right.
In class, teacher Mevrou Joyce Burger told us that ‘some troublemakers’ want to destroy our future and we should not allow them to.
But we did not understand what she was talking about.
During the first class period the teachers announced that Communists have taken over Soweto schools and we must remain calm.
News was at the time controlled by the Nationalist Government and we were not aware what was going on until the following day when newspapers like the Rand Daily Mail beamed bloody pictures of the Soweto Uprising.
We were scared.and shockd but also excited that our classes would be disrupted and stay at home instead of walking to school in the cold.
Our school was colder than the rest because it was on the banks of the Moretele River at the foot of the gigantic Mogale Mountains near the now Moretele Resort.
Classes went on uninterrupted with heavy police presence outside the premises for the rest of the week.
Then came Monday, 21 June 1976.
The white teachers were very unsettled and were asked to slowly move out of the classes as there are some troublemakers approaching our school.
There was a heavy police presence and a police helicopter hovering over our school.
At our school gate, we saw placard carrying students chanting and marching towards our school.
We were told “Black Power has arrived” and we must leave the school and join them.
The first violent incident was when a municipal truck was torched just outside the school.
That was followed by a paint truck next to Mamelodi High.
And then the looting of bakery trucks and other food delivery vehicles.
Mamelodi was turned upside down and was never the same again. And so was the entire country.