16/06/2026
As South Africa celebrates Youth Day, we remember and honour the young people who lost their lives during the 1976 Soweto Uprising in the struggle against the brutality, dehumanisation and systemic injustices of apartheid.
This Youth Day coincides with months-long protests against black African migrants in South Africa, who continue to be blamed for the country's myriad socio-economic challenges.
As we commemorate the youth of 1976, we must remember that they fought against a system of racial domination whose consequences did not end with apartheid, nor were they confined to South Africa alone. Across the African continent, generations of young people continue to grapple with the enduring legacies of colonialism, dispossession, underdevelopment, inequality and economic exclusion.
It is therefore a profound tragedy that the frustrations born of these historical and structural injustices are increasingly directed at fellow Africans. While our struggles may manifest differently across African countries, they emerge from interconnected histories of exploitation and marginalisation. We must never allow black people, bound by a shared history of oppression and a common aspiration for dignity and liberation, to be turned against one another.
Honouring the history of 1976 requires more than remembrance; it requires rejecting scapegoating, defending human dignity and building solidarity among African peoples in confronting the structural roots of the challenges that continue to face our societies.
