This week Khlulisa will celebrate two important holidays – one in the United States and one in South Africa – that commemorate the fight for freedom, equality, and human rights.
June 16th, Youth Day, marks the date of the Soweto Uprising in South Africa. On June 16th, 1976, 20,000 Black South African pupils flooded the streets of Soweto to protest the apartheid government’s Bantu Education System and its mandated use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction. Hundreds of people, most of them children and youth, were killed during the uprising, which is considered a pivotal event in the ultimate downfall of the apartheid regime in the 1990s. Youth Day was declared a South African public holiday in 1995.
June 19th, or Juneteenth, commemorates the day in 1865 when U.S. troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to free the last remaining enslaved Black people in the United States. Although the Confederacy surrendered two months earlier and the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, slavery had continued relatively unabated in Texas – which experienced minimal fighting during the Civil War and had become a haven for enslavers – before Juneteenth. Black Americans have celebrated Juneteenth for decades, but June 19th did not become an official U.S. holiday until 2021.
As an organization committed to human rights and quality education, Khulisa looks forward to celebrating these two holidays on with our staff on both sides of the Atlantic. We also take this opportunity, as evaluators, to re-affirm our commitment to equality and freedom in the United States, South Africa, and the rest of the world.