SACP salutes student heroes

The South African Communist Party, in a June 15 statement on the 30th anniversary of the 1976 student uprisings, saluted “those heroes and heroines, both departed and living, for their historic contribution toward the liberation of our country.”

The SACP said the student uprisings, alongside the 1973 workers’ strikes in Durban, South Africa, “laid a basis for the revival of internal mass resistance against apartheid” and lent momentum to the movement to overthrow the racist system.

It called on South Africa’s youth of today to intensify the struggle for jobs, free education, women’s rights, and new sports and recreation centers. It said young people should struggle for “a state that is biased toward the working class”— a state that benefits the many, rather than a select few.