ABSTRACT
June 16 is now a public holiday in South Africa. It commemorates a day in 1976 when police opened fire on a protest march of African schoolchildren in Soweto, Johannesburg, and it represents a turning point in the long history of resistance to the apartheid government. It was this resistance which, gathering force during the 1980s, was to culminate in a process of political transition to a liberal democratic government, officially marked by general elections in April of 1994.
