Book Review: The Soweto Uprising: Ohio Short Histories of Africa by Noor Nieftagodien

Abstract

Noor Nieftagodien The Soweto Uprising: Ohio Short Histories of Africa, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press (First published by Jacana Media), 2014; 165 pp.: ISBN 9780821421543 (pbk) This short book is part of a series published by the University of Ohio on histories of Africa. It is a brief record of the student response in several Witwatersrand African townships in 1975 and 1976 to an attempt by the apartheid government of South Africa to force African children to use Afrikaans as the teaching medium. Up to that time, all teaching in South African schools for Africans was conducted in South African English. The recording of the events of 1975 and 1976 is an important contribution to the history of South Africa. We need specific records like this to add depth and context to our understanding of African history as a whole. The author relies heavily on oral reports and this is one of the book's great strengths. Oral histories are crucial: ordinary people--often denied a voice and absent from conventional historical records--can tell their own stories in their own voice. The book has five chapters, starting with the causes and character of the student response. The second chapter describes what the author calls the political awakening in Soweto. The third and fourth chapters record chronologically the events and the reaction of the apartheid state to African students' refusal to accept Afrikaans as the teaching medium. The final chapter discusses the aftermath and suggests that it led to a novel mass movement in South Africa. The book is written from the perspective of 'Black Consciousness' as elaborated by Steve Biko. What Black Consciousness means is not explained in this book, perhaps for lack of space or the assumption that readers would be familiar with the notion. Judging from the slogans used during these events, such as 'Sons and Daughters of the Black nations' (p. 133), I infer that Black Consciousness is a call to ethnic division. It is identity politics. The events described in this book occurred about 40 years ago: plenty of historical experience since then indicates where identity or ethnicity politics leads. The events in West Asia over the last 16 years show that identity politics is a disaster for the working class, for which reason imperialists advocate it everywhere. I came away from reading this book with two overwhelming impressions. First, the events described in this book from 1970 to 1976 repeat the history of the African National Congress from 1913 to 1960. In the beginning, there were petitions to the authorities, which were uniformly ignored. …