On June 6, 1976, over 10,000 schoolchildren protesting the inferiority of black schools in South Africa peacefully advanced through the streets of Soweto (the sprawling, impoverished black township) towards an open-air stadium for a planned rally. Without warning, a white policeman threw a tear-gas canister, then the other riot police fired their automatic weapons on the singing marchers, killing at least four -- including a 13-year-old. This sparked off the Soweto Uprising, the bloodiest episode of riots between protestors and police since the early sixties. By the end of 1977, the violence had claimed more than a thousand lives and injured many more.

In 1950, South Africa had set up its segregated Bantu Education system, forcing blacks to pay to attend decrepit schools with over-crowded classrooms, under-qualified teachers and shoddy curricula. Meanwhile, public education for whites was free. In 1975, a new decree required all academic school subjects to be taught in Afrikaans while practical and technical classes would still be taught in English. This new policy virtually guaranteed black academic failure because students now had to be proficient in both the national languages to succeed. The wave of unrest which the decree caused culminated in the Soweto massacre.