Inferiority Instilled

Dr Verwoerd, later Prime Minister, stated: "There is no place for him (the Black) in the European community above certain forms of labour ... When I have control of native education I will reform it so that natives will be taught from childhood to realise that equality with Europeans is not for them."

The black students who fought at Soweto had been wholly educated under this Act. And they had come to see how they stood in the view of the whites.

They realised their role in the economy of apartheid, as the exploited and oppressed majority. They learnt who their enemy was, their white rulers and the foreign investors who prop up the apartheid regime.

Behind the Bantu Education Act, there was apartheid. It was apartheid that was responsible for the white government spending 551 rands on each white school student each year, but only 54 rands on every African child. It was also the white regime responsible for the bitter reality of life in Soweto.