OPINION| The youth of 1976 did not die for empty speeches

Simon Nare

You have to revisit the footage of Wednesday, June 16, 1976, to understand the determination and resolve of the students of that generation, and to grasp how willing they were to die for their country.

They stood toe to toe with the brutal forces of the apartheid regime.

I was still knee-high to a grasshopper, far away in a Limpopo village, when those girls in dangari and boys, armed with stones and sticks, faced police officers who were shooting at them with live ammunition. Some ducked as bullets flew, only to rise again and hurl stones back at the armed police.

The area now known as the Hector Pieterson Precinct, preserved in memory of the 1976 uprising, became a lopsided war zone. Heavily armed police squared up against schoolchildren, and the result was bloodshed.

Today, as the country commemorates 50 years since that bloody encounter, we still have