ABSTRACT
Dan O'Meara has commented that 'Like "Munich" or "Suez", Soweto was one of those rare historical catalysts which irreversibly transform the political landscape, whose very name becomes a metaphor for lessons learned by an entire society.'3 It is now accepted that the Soweto uprising represented a crucial juncture in contemporary South African history. In effect, the protest by African schoolchildren against the introduction of Afrikaans-language instruction, which developed into 18 months of intermittent unrest, signalled the end of 12 years of mainly muted African submission in the face of the repression of the South African state. The Soweto uprising inspired a resurgence of the industrial action already evident in 1972-73, and, eventually, the domestic reappearance of the ANC; it also possessed a millenarian quality which would reappear in the 1980s. 'Soweto' signified the emergence of a revitalised African agency and it sounded the first death knell for the apartheid regime.
