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South African Historical JournalISSN: 0258-2473 (Print) 1726-1686 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rshj20
Bodibeng High School: Black Consciousness
Philosophy and Students Demonstration,
1940s–1976
Tshepo Moloi
To cite this article: Tshepo Moloi (2011) Bodibeng High School: Black Consciousness Philosophy
and Students Demonstration, 1940s–1976, South African Historical Journal, 63:1, 102-126, DOI:
10.1080/02582473.2011.549376
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2011.549376
Published online: 22 Mar 2011.
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,South African Historical Journal
Vol. 63, No. 1, March 2011, 102126
Bodibeng High School: Black Consciousness Philosophy and Students
Demonstration, 1940s 1976
TSHEPO MOLOI*
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Abstract
This paper examines the factor(s) that caused students to demonstrate in 1976
through a case study of Bodibeng High School in Maokeng, Kroonstad, in the
northern Free State. It shows the role of the teachers influenced by the Black
Consciousness philosophy. The latter caused the behavioural change of some of
the students at Bodibeng High School, from submissive to assertive, and
political. Bodibeng High School, dating back to the 1940s, was one of the
major centres of education for African students in the then Orange Free State
(now Free State Province). It was one of the two day schools to offer matric as
early as 1940, and the only one to have its matriculants writing the Joint
Matriculation Board Examination in the mid 1960s, instead of the Bantu
Education’s senior certificate examinations. The school attracted an influx of
students from all over the country, and some of the best teachers. There were
three phases in the history of the school; each phase can be characterised in
terms of the degree of its engagement in the political affairs of the day. The first,
from the 1940s to 1950s, was one where teachers engaged both education and
politics actively. The second, from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s was a
period of apparent quiescence. The third, from the early 1970s, was
characterised, once again, by active engagement of students and teachers with
politics. In the latter period, the Black Consciousness philosophy was the major
influence. This paper will show that the influence of the Black Consciousness
philosophy and the role of the younger and politically conscious teachers
played an important part in influencing some of the students at Bodibeng to
demonstrate in 1976.
Key words: black consciousness; joint matriculation board; free state; students
demonstration; Bodibeng High; Maokeng Students Arts Club; Bantu
education; South African students organisation; National Party; syllabus
*Email: tshepo.moloi@wits.ac.z
ISSN: Print 0258-2473/Online 1726-1686
# 2011 Southern African Historical Society
DOI: 10.1080/02582473.2011.549376
http://www.informaworld.com
, BODIBENG HIGH SCHOOL 103
Introduction
Immediately after 21:00 on the night of 24 August 1976 a group of students1 from
Bodibeng High School in Maokeng Township, Kroonstad, took to the streets in
solidarity with students in Soweto. They moved around the township pelting government
buildings with stones and breaking down some. However, before the dawn of the new day
the demonstration had been put to an end and all the student leaders had been rounded
up and arrested. Many more arrests followed in subsequent days and weeks. This was the
first display of open defiance of its kind by students at Bodibeng High since the 1940s.2
What influenced these students? Who were the students who led the demonstration? And
why did the demonstration take place in August two months after the eruption of the
16 June Soweto students’ uprising?3 These are some of the questions that this paper will
examine.
In attempting to explain the factor(s) that caused students at Bodibeng High School to
demonstrate, this paper will show that from the early 1970s the behaviour of some of
the students at Bodibeng, particularly those in Forms One and Two, changed and became
assertive and political. This change, the paper will contend, was precipitated by the
students’ embrace of the Black Consciousness (BC) philosophy as espoused by the South
African Student Organisation (SASO) and the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in
general.
Not long after the 1976 student uprisings, which erupted in Soweto, various authors
such as Alan Brooks and Jeremy Brickhill, Baruch Hirson, and John Kane-Berman
produced work trying to explain the factors that caused the uprisings. In their explanations
they placed emphasis on different factors. Brooks and Brickhill highlighted changes in the
educational system;4 Hirson stressed the role played by the African working class and the
then banned African National Congress (ANC) as the main catalysts for the uprisings;5
moreover, Judge Cillie, chairman of the Cillie Commission,6 placed the immediate causes
of the uprisings on official inefficiency (that is, officials’ failure to read students’
1. The words ‘student’ and ‘pupil’ are used interchangeably to denote school-going youth. In 1942 Form One
students at Bantu High (in 1967 the name was changed to Bodibeng High) petitioned the school’s
authorities demanding to be taught Mathematics and not Arithmetic. Interview with Nana, Mahomo by
Tshepo Moloi for the ‘Local Histories and Present Realities’ Programme, Kempton Park, 10 April 2008.
(interviews, all with the author and for the ‘Local Histories and Present Realities’ Programme unless
otherwise stated on first reference).
2. The word ‘uprising’ (or in plural, uprisings) is used here to denote a more organized and sustained
students’ rebellion against the unjust system. And demonstration, on the other hand, is used to indicate an
unorganized and less sustained protest against an unjust system.
3. A. Brooks and J. Brickhill Whirlwind Before the Storm: The Origins and Development of the Uprising in
Soweto and the Rest of South Africa from June to December 1976 (London: International Defence and Aid
Fund for Southern Africa, 1980).
4. B. Hirson Year of Fire, Year of Ash: The Soweto Revolt: Roots of a Revolution? (London: Zed Press, 1979).
5. This was a government appointed commission of inquiry into the events of the Soweto (and elsewhere)
demonstrations. See H. Pohlandt-McCormick ‘‘‘I saw a nightmare . . .’’ Doing Violence to Memory: The
Soweto Uprising, June 16, 1976’ (University of Minnesota: PhD Thesis, 1999), 24.
6. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Riots at Soweto and Elsewhere from the 16th of June 1976 to
the 28th of February 1977, Vol. 1 (Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Government
Publications, 1980).
, 104 TSHEPO MOLOI
dissatisfactory mood over the Afrikaans issue), deficiency in police township intelligence,
and the role played by the agitators;7 and yet Kane-Berman singled out the influence of the
BC (philosophy) as the most important factor in explaining the volatility of the townships.8
Recently, some scholars such as Sifiso Ndlovu, Peter Lekgoathi, and Philip Bonner and
Noor Nieftagodien have developed new analyses to explain the student uprisings. Their
emphasis falls on the active agency of students. Moreover, they question the role of the BC.
For Ndlovu, who in 1976 was a Form Two student in Soweto, students in junior standards
(Standard Five to Form Two)9 were the major force in the cause of the uprisings, because
they were directly affected by the Department of Bantu Education’s (DBE) directive for
the compulsory use of Afrikaans in half of the subjects.10 Drawing from personal
experience, he notes that his former school Phefeni Junior Secondary was the first to
boycott classes (in May) and was later followed by other students from other higher
primary and junior secondary schools in Soweto.11 He argues, ‘I do not remember any
liberation movement, such as the BCM or the South African Student Movement (SASM)
contributing to our daily meetings and discussions.’12 Moreover, in a chapter in the second
volume of The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Ndlovu observes that SASM took a
decision at its conference in Roodepoort (West of Johannesburg) to support schools
affected by the Afrikaans directive well after his school had been on a go-slow before the
official class boycott on 17 May 1976.13
Lekgoathi’s study, on the other hand, focusing on rural areas in the former northern
Transvaal (now Limpopo Province), emphasises the role of the urban students who were
studying in schools in Lebowa as the driving force behind the uprisings in that area.14
According to him ‘. . . the most pivotal role in the disturbances at Matladi Secondary
School in Zebediela was played by urban students mostly boarders, particularly those
from the townships around Pretoria.’15 Bonner and Nieftagodien, in Alexandra: A History,
stress the combination of the government’s imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of
instruction and the deteriorating conditions in township schools, including massive
7. J. Kane-Berman, Soweto: Black Revolt, White Reaction (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1978); also see
C. Glaser, ‘We Must Infiltrate the Tsotsis: School Politics and Youth Gangs in Soweto, 19681976’,
Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 2 (1998).
8. In today’s terminology Standard Five is Grade Seven and Form Two is Grade Nine.
9. When the DBE introduced Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in black schools it intended to
implement it in phases, starting from the lower level up to matric level. Thus it was first implemented from
Standard Five up to Form Two. These were Higher Primary and Junior Secondary levels, respectively.
Students at Senior secondary (that is, Form Three) and High school (that is, Forms Four and Five) were
not affected by the Afrikaans directive.
10. S. Ndlovu The Soweto Uprisings: Counter-memories of June 1976 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1998), 37.
11. Ibid., 7.
12. S.M. Ndlovu. ‘The Soweto Uprising’, in The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Vol. 2 (19701980)
(Pretoria: UNISA Press for the South African Democracy Education Trust, 2006), 339.
13. S.P. Lekgoathi, ‘Reconstructing the History of Educational Transformation in a Rural Transvaal
Chiefdom: The Radicalization of Teachers in Zebediela from the Early 1950s to the early 1990s (MA
Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand: Johannesburg, 1995), Chapter 4; also, see J.S.N. Mathabatha The
Struggle Over Education in the Northern Transvaal: The Case of Catholic Mission Schools, 19481994
(Amsterdam: Rozenburg Publishers, SAVUSA/NiZA, 2005).
14. Lekgoathi, ‘Reconstructing’, 167.
15. P. Bonner and N. Nieftagodien, Alexandra: A History (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2001), 201.
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