In January 1976, at the start of the school year, the state expanded the curriculum of Afrikaans-language instruction in black schools in the Transvaal. Half the subjects studied in the first year of junior secondary schooling would now no longer be taught in English, but rather in Afrikaans.

This language policy was not the first or the only imposition placed upon this particular group of students: from the start of the year, they were suffering from the consequences of a decision taken in 1975, intended to reduce overcrowding in black schools over time. The Bantu Education Department aimed to even out classroom sizes across the country by abolishing a year of studies between the end of junior school and the start of secondary school. In the short term, this meant that double the normal number of students were taking part in the first year of junior secondary schooling in 1976 – ‘creating an unwieldy bulge of numbers that meant yet more crowding and double shifts, more shortages of textbooks and qualified teachers’, as Karis and Gerhart put it.

These factors – both national and provincial – angered students, and helped prompt them into action. The first significant protests against these changes in education policy took place in March and April 1976, amongst the 13- and 14-year-old students most affected by them. Pupils at Phefeni Junior Secondary School embarked on a ‘go-slow’ in March. According to Sifiso Ndlovu, a pupil at the time, this meant that the students refused to go to class after lunch and, instead, ‘dedicated the afternoon lessons in our class, from 2 o’clock to about 4 o’clock to discussion about the directive that Afrikaans should be the medium of instruction in our school’.

Ndlovu recalled that discussions were limited to ‘issues that affected us directly in the school and classroom’ and did not drift into questioning the legitimacy of the apartheid system. Older students, prefects, teachers, ‘and other authorities including the principal’ were excluded from these meetings. The meetings provided a space where very young students could engage with each other, and reflect upon and engage with their own experiences, without outside guidance.

It is possible to cast these meetings as the true starting point of the Soweto Uprising: they linked experience to reflection, and reflection to action.