OPINION | SA’s epochal 1976 uprisings shouldn’t be reduced to a symbolic ritual

It is no doubt important to do this, and to remember the sacrifices and struggles of the past. But in commemorating this day, SA runs the risk of sacralising these events — of lifting them out of their historical context, stripping them of their political complexities, and remaking them into a mere symbol, something that only needs to be remembered once a year and then forgotten the rest of the time.

It is now almost trite to suggest that the political order of postapartheid SA was forged in conference rooms and around negotiating tables; that the conversations, debates, and arguments between the representatives of the negotiating parties are what shaped the terms of the country’s political institutions and laws; and that the country constitution is best understoodWhat is wrong with this vision is that it leaves out the role of ordinary people taking to the streets — the role of protest, of...

It presumes that the state is the beginning and the end of the political order; that democracy is only achievable through representation; and it presumes that “the people” are a political resource to be deployed by elite actors and not a source of political ideas in themselves.While democracy may be encouraged and entrenched through institutions and ideas, it is first made through action. The students who marched on June 16 1976 did more than simply register a political opinion.

They enacted an alternate form of politics. By gathering and marching together, and by acting together they constituted themselves as political agents — as people who already possessed the kind of agency that the apartheid state denied they could ever claim. And by marching side-by-side — regardless of their age and gender, status and authority — they constituted themselves as a democratic force, as a community of equals.

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