By Pontsho Hlongwane
But what actually happened in 1976? The June 1976 protest, commonly known as the Soweto Uprising in Johannesburg, began as a student-led demonstration against the apartheid government's decision to make Afrikaans a compulsory language of instruction in many black schools.
Thousands of school children marched as they refused to learn technical subjects in Afrikaans, which would have made effective learning impossible.
To these learners, the policy represented systematic exclusion designed to condemn Black people to perpetual illiteracy. The apartheid government had weaponised language as a structural barrier to education.
The learners rejected it and fought back. The uprising quickly spread beyond Soweto to other parts of South Africa and evolved into a broader protest against apartheid, racial discrimination, poor education, and the lack of political rights for Black South Africans.
Frantz Fanon, a French West Indian philosopher, would say they discovered their mission, faced difficult choices and chose to fulfil it.
They had the option to remain complacent, betray the mission, and hope their inaction would be excused on account of their youth, but they chose to actively organize and disrupt the status quo.
As we reflect today, five decades later in 2026, the courageous, self-determined leadership of the 1976 generation must inspire us to accept political responsibility and confront the macroeconomic challenges disproportionately affecting today's youth.
Just as the Soweto learners did not wait for the apartheid government to voluntarily abandon its goal of ensuring that Black South Africans were only educated enough to perform manual labour, today’s youth cannot afford to passively wait for government to serve their interests. According to recent data, six out of 10 young people aged 15–24 are unemployed, followed closely by four out of 10 aged 25–34.
More than four out of 10 young people aged 15–34 are completely disengaged from both the education system and the labour market (NEET). In a society where free and fair democratic elections are held every five years, these alarming numbers should not exist. Of great concern, instead of declining, youth unemployment continues to rise. Behind these statistics are human beings condemned to hopelessness and perpetual suffering.
The longer they remain locked out of the economy, the harder it becomes for them to take charge of their own destinies. The consequences of this widespread hopelessness carry far-reaching implications for the country’s future. Consequently, clear grounds must be established to hold the government accountable.
This situation raises important questions about the adequacy and effectiveness of current policy responses and the accountability of the executive for employment outcomes. Consideration could be given to strengthening mechanisms that hold government decision-makers accountable for persistent policy failure.
One proposal is that clearer statutory grounds be developed for assessing the performance of the Minister of Employment and Labour, including whether sustained and demonstrable failure to implement effective measures to reduce unemployment should carry consequences for continued tenure in public office. Such an approach would draw inspiration from the Companies Act of South Africa 2008, which provides for accountability in cases of serious governance failure within corporate leadership.
Making this a public policy would discourage individuals whose capacity to solve macroeconomic challenges falls below par from putting themselves forward for public service.
Given the vast resources at the state's disposal, the government’s failure to curb youth unemployment is unfathomable, especially since analytical thinkers have previously proposed practical, and feasible models to address it. One potential model is the “flexible work-year” concept proposed by economist Benjamin Graham in 1964, which sought to address unemployment by varying working hours and employment levels in response to economic conditions.
The concept provides for the equitable division of available employment hours among those qualified to work. Despite its limitations, implementing this model could yield socially optimal outcomes. Holding other variables constant, the State could theoretically create 1.7 million new job opportunities without taking on massive debt or building new factories.
This can be achieved by using more flexible working hours and allowing people to work fewer hours while maintaining productivity. If the 5.6 million young people who are currently employed took more annual leave — six weeks instead of three — and employers hired additional staff to cover the extra time off, the youth unemployment rate could fall from 45% to 26%.
This offers a practical mechanism to mitigate unemployment immediately. But implementing this requires more than economic theory; it requires the same mass mobilization that shook the country 50 years ago.
Today's youth must organise across youth political organizations, student bodies, civil society organizations and digital spaces to demand this structural shift. Based on empirical evidence regarding human productivity, the model assumes that even when annual work hours are reduced by three weeks, existing employees will still achieve 100% of their yearly output.
This optimisation is essential to prevent the average cost of doing business from rising. Although Graham requested that his model be disassociated from any basic economic theory, it functions like any economic model aimed at simplifying complex realities. Admittedly, it would be disingenuous to present this as a blanket, one-size-fits-all solution; the structure of employment and unemployment in our country is deeply complex.
However, complexity should not preclude us from experimenting. The ultimate lesson from the generation of 1976 is the necessity of solidarity, even when one holds individual advantages in life. Many of the students who marched against Afrikaans might have possessed the personal aptitude to succeed despite the odds stacked against them. Yet, they consciously chose the success of the collective over individual advancement.
Today, as millions of young people desperately search for work, their success hinges on the solidarity of their employed peers. The protests of 2026 do not need to mimic the physical barricades of the past, but they must mirror their collective defiance. Today's youth resistance means collectively organising to demand three more weeks of leave so that their unemployed brothers and sisters can enter the workforce.
The social and economic benefits of ensuring that as many young people are employed at shorter hours outweigh any system where a select few work longer hours while the majority are left behind. The 1976 generation took it to the streets to demand their freedom; the 2026 generation must actively organize to be included.
Pontsho Hlongwane is a youth activist and staff member at Nelson Mandela University. He writes in his own capacity.