✨

The apartheid government was very violent against children. The murder of the 5 children in Mthatha by the SA Defence Force (SADF) is shocking, but not unexpected for those of us who experienced the violence of the SA Police (SAP) as activists and youth and student leaders in Soweto. I spent my formative years as a youth and student activist in the early 1990s when I got to high school, through COSAS , the Soweto Youth Congress (SOYCO) and later ANC Youth League in 1991. My first-hand experience of children being abused as 13-15 year olds was when I witnessed them being badly beaten in a student meeting held at the Jabavu Youth Centre. At the end of 1989, at the age of 13, they picked up my friend who had a PAC emblem. They took me and him, drove us around Soweto and made us jump from a moving car. By age 14, they had attacked us as COSAS leaders, rounded us up between Soweto and Park Station, set dogs on us and pepper-sprayed us. By age 15, we were ambushed in a bus by hostel dwellers on our way from Orlando Stadium in 1992. Old men chased us with spears and shot at us. It is this violence against children perpetrated by the government from the late 1980s up to 1993 that is not spoken about enough.