Youth Day (Public Holiday) - Nationwide Event / Public Holiday in South Africa

Nationwide Events & Public Holidays

Youth Day (Public Holiday)

When: Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Where: South Africa, Nationwide
Categories: Public Holidays

Youth Day - 16 June - was previously known as Soweto Day.

In 1975 protests started in African schools after a directive from the previous Bantu Education Department that Afrikaans had to be used on an equal basis with English as a language of instruction in secondary schools.

The issue however, was not so much the Afrikaans as the whole system of Bantu education which was characterised by separate schools and universities, poor facilities, overcrowded classrooms and inadequately trained teachers.

On the 16th June in 1976, more than 20 000 pupils from Soweto began a protest march. In the wake of clashes with the police, and the violence that ensued during the next few weeks, approximately 700 hundred people, many of them youths, were killed and property destroyed.

Youth Day commemorates these events.

Related Pages:
Soweto Attractions
Soweto Map
Soweto Tours
Things to Do in Soweto

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