Join us on 16 June 12:00 for a film screening of UPRIZE! Directed by Sifiso Khanyile. After the screening, the director will be in conversation with Athi Nangamso Nkopo who is a fallist and edited the Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise Racist Heart of Empire Book.
UPRIZE! Synopsis
On the morning of 16 June 1976, a group of school children in Soweto gathered peacefully to protest the mandatory inclusion of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. By nightfall over 200 of them lay dead, mowed down by Apartheid armed forces. Forty years later, this film looks at the world that made these kids, and how in the absence of political leadership, they stood up to the might of an oppressive state. Speaking to artists, writers, musicians, teachers that inspired them, and some of the former student leaders themselves, we get a glimpse into 1970s South Africa and the cost of the fight for quality education and freedom. Especially relevant forty years later as university students once again take to the streets to fight the postapartheid government on the issue of free quality education.