Max du Preez, Youth Day and my discovery of another Afrikaans
Daily Maverick | 17.06.2026 04:10
For many South Africans, 16 June 1976 and Afrikaans are forever linked. On that day, schoolchildren in Soweto marched against the apartheid government’s plans to impose Afrikaans as a language of instruction in “black” schools. The state responded with violence. Young people died. Images from that day travelled around the world and exposed the brutality of apartheid in a way that few events had done before.
