S. Africa Blacks Mark ’76 Soweto Protest With Boycott

More than 1 million blacks boycotted work Wednesday, shutting down major cities on the anniversary of the 1976 student uprising against apartheid.

Many businesses either closed or tried to make do with a skeleton staff of white workers, particularly in the larger cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

“The events of June 16 (1976) and after brought a new life to the struggle against apartheid,” African National Congress President Nelson Mandela told 30,000 cheering supporters at a soccer stadium in Soweto outside Johannesburg.

The anniversary is the most important single day of the anti-apartheid struggle, and it has become an unofficial holiday for many of the country’s 30 million blacks.

There were no reports of major clashes between police and demonstrators, which has happened on previous anniversaries of the uprising.

Police said that four blacks were killed in scattered violence nationwide, but it was unclear if the killings were linked to the protests. Activists erected barricades and stoned cars around the eastern cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg, police said. One police officer was injured.

The 1976 uprising began when Soweto students protested a government order that they be taught in Afrikaans, the Dutch-derived language of the white Afrikaners who dominate the government. The protests quickly spread throughout the country, and hundreds of black youths were killed over several months.

At the time, it was the most sustained protest ever against apartheid, and it focused international attention on white-minority rule.

Mandela said this year’s anniversary would be the last one under apartheid. Black and white political parties are negotiating an end to white rule and have provisionally set multiracial elections for April 27.

Support for the strike appeared widespread. Reports from around the country indicated that 90% to 100% of black workers observed the stayaway in most areas.