‘If you belong to my generation and you never read James Hadley Chase, then you are not educated’: Everyday Reading of High School Students in Soweto, 1968–1976

Abstract

Scholarship on the Soweto students’ uprising of 16 June 1976 focuses on the political mobilisation of the march, the day of the march itself and memorialisation of the event. Many of these studies fail to portray the everyday lives of the students who protested against the Bantu Education system in South Africa, dwelling on the spectacular. This article primarily draws on oral history interviews with former student activists of the 1960s and 1970s to historicise their reading practices. It thus introduces a new layer to the story of the making of youth political consciousness in South African schools in the 1970s. The article shows how reading happened in the classroom, the playground and the home and how this reading led to the formation of multiple and contiguous subaltern counterpublic spheres that became the crucible of many of the student leaders of the march of 1976. It adds to the literature on the subversion of apartheid by exploring some contradictions in the system that were exploited by students and teachers.