Some dates just sit heavy in the story of this country, and 10 June is one of them.
1976: In the days leading up to the Soweto Uprising on 16 June, the tension across the townships was already electric. On 10 June 1976, students and community members in Soweto were actively organising protests against the apartheid government’s policy enforcing Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in Black schools. The groundwork being laid in those days before the 16th is something that doesn’t get talked about enough. It wasn’t just one day that changed South Africa, it was a whole season of courage building up, and knowing that makes what happened on the 16th feel even more remarkable.
1964: The Rivonia Trial delivered its sentencing on 12 June, but around this time the world’s attention was firmly fixed on Pretoria, my city, and on the men standing in the dock at the Palace of Justice. On 10 June 1964, international pressure was mounting on South Africa to spare the lives of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and the other accused. The United Nations had already called for their release, and the global conversation about what kind of country South Africa wanted to be was reaching a crescendo. It’s strange to think about Mandela possibly being executed here in Pretoria, and how completely different the whole trajectory of this country would have been.
1999: South Africa held its second fully democratic general election on 2 June 1999, and by 10 June the results had been certified and Thabo Mbeki was confirmed as the country’s second democratically elected president, set to be inaugurated on the 16th. It marked something genuinely significant, the peaceful transfer of power from Mandela to Mbeki, which proved that 1994 wasn’t just a lucky moment but the beginning of something real. People forget how much the world was watching to see if South Africa could do this twice. We could, and we did, and that still deserves a moment of recognition.
History doesn’t move in straight lines here, it spirals and surprises you, but on days like today you can feel how much ordinary South Africans shaped the extraordinary.
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