When young people woke up on the 16th of June and decided to join the call to boycott school and take to the streets to protest against the education they were receiving, they did not know that they were participating in a crucial moment of history which would continue to reverberate for half a century. Their actions that day in standing up to a brutal state would be decisive in the gradual crumbling of the apartheid system and would ultimately usher in a new age.
While the initial event that we continue to celebrate took place on June 16th, in fact the uprising continued for many months after that moment. Even at the end of this period, it was not clear that the protests had been successful. Thousands of people had suffered, been imprisoned and wounded, and hundreds (perhaps thousands) killed through police brutality. Millions of rands worth of damage had been done. As the crackdown became more intense, it forced many young people into making life-changing decisions to go underground rather than giving up the fight. It precipitated the movement of countless young people out of the country to begin a more militant approach to dismantling apartheid. And it exposed the tyranny of the South African government in facing down children with fire.
Ultimately the events that were precipitated that day led to a crisis where the image of the South African government both within the country and beyond had suffered significant and, as it turns out, irreparable damage.
When we celebrate youth on June 16th we are not celebrating their commitment to a single day of action but rather to the fact there there were young people taking step after step after step in an ongoing commitment to the struggle against oppression, fuelled by an intense belief that a better kind of future must be possible.
The activism of young people has contributed significantly to the South Africa that we see and experience today, and it is these youth voices that we celebrate at ASSITEJ SA.
What is the vision for our country that you cannot let go of? What is the idea that is worth standing up for and coming back to, day after day…?
And as artists, how can we manifest these ideas in the world and connect young people to ensure that these ideas are expressed, shared and interrogated?
ASSITEJ South Africa believes that the arts are a crucial catalyst for understanding ourselves and our world, and that there is no better space than theatre for this examination. We believe that every child must have access to the arts from the earliest possible age. At the National Arts Festival this year we will be championing the work of 20 of our member companies, some of whose productions will be in the new ASSITEJ SA Family Hub at Glennie Hall. It is an opportunity for the wealth of South African’s young talent and creativity to be shared and for young minds to engage with work made with, for and by them.
We are daily inspired by the creativity and drive of young people and we celebrate all the youth voices (past, present and future) who bring insight, determination and courage to this ongoing mission.
16 June 2025 – Youth Day Message by Yvette Hardie, on behalf of the Board of Assitej South Africa
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