It’s thirty three years today since Hastings Ndlovu, Hector Pieterson and twenty one other children were mowed down by the hate-filled bullets of the apartheid state machine, in the South Western Township (Soweto) of Orlando, which had produced the Mandelas and Sisulus, then in prison. Their crime was refusing to be taught with what Desmond Tutu described as “the oppressors language” in line with the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974. Over 500 persons were to be shot dead or never to be seen again from the violence that rocked the apartheid enclave for days after this. It was actually the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime as within and outside the country the visible “fire in Soweto, burning all my people” (as Okosun rightly sang) became a clarion for action.

Sam Nzima’s picture of 12-year old Hector carried in the arms of his cousin, with his sister running along distraught with trauma, became a prick on the conscience of humanity (although of course what has no conscience could not be pricked, thus Anglo-Saxon capital, for example, continued its intercourse with the racist devil).

What are some of the general lessons in brief, we could draw from Soweto as activists in today’s Nigeria, and indeed as partisans in the struggle for social change, across the world as a whole?

First, I would say is the import of consistent organization and the multifarous nature of organization in building the momentum for change. It took ANC 82 years to move from formation to democratic seizure of power. Power which it won and retained barely two months back, in a situation contributing to what Bond recently described as a further left-shifting South Africa. ANC (and as well PAC) was barely on ground in the country then in 1976. Haven been dealt a severe blow in the aftermath of Sharpeville and the Rivonia trials, its leadership and activists were mainly,