Dear Campus Community,
Fifty years after the Soweto Uprising, young people continue to remind us that change rarely begins in places of power. Often, it begins when ordinary people agree that the world as it is cannot remain the world as it should be.
This Youth Day, we honour the courage of the young people who marched through the streets of Soweto on 16 June 1976 in pursuit of justice, dignity and a better education. Their actions changed the course of our nation's history. Yet Youth Day is not only an opportunity to remember the past. It is also an invitation to reflect on how the youth continue to shape the present and conceive the future.
Around the world, young people are confronting some of the defining challenges of our time: inequality, unemployment, climate change, conflict, technological disruption and growing social fragmentation. They are not just responding to these challenges; they are instead building movements, creating new knowledge, strengthening communities, and insisting that a more just and humane world remains possible.
Hajar Kagiso Al-Tha'irah Ahjum-Mathee at her graduation this year.Image: Shelley Christians/UWCOne of those young people is UWC Master's student Hajar Kagiso Al-Tha'irah Ahjum-Mathee, who recently returned after participating in an international humanitarian flotilla seeking to deliver aid to Gaza.
Reflecting on Youth Day, she reminds us that the values of solidarity and justice that inspired the youth of 1976 remain relevant today.
"It remains our duty to read, educate ourselves and remain critically engaged," she says.
Her words speak to a generation that understands democracy not as a finished project, but as something that must be continuously renewed.
This spirit of active citizenship is visible across UWC and beyond.
This year, the Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education celebrates 10 years of supporting grassroots movements and community organisations in South Africa and the continent. Established to help sustain struggles for freedom, dignity and equality, the centre has spent a decade creating spaces where people can learn together, organise collectively and imagine alternatives to injustice.
As Siviwe Mdoda, Coordinator of the Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education, reflects:
“Education must be more than textbooks and lectures; it must be a tool for action. Knowledge is power only when it is shared and used to transform society.”
For Mdoda, activist education helps young people confront many of the defining challenges of our time, from unemployment and inequality to the climate crisis.
"Youth Day is about asking how we continue the struggle for dignity and justice," he says. "It is where young South Africans are proving that activism is not a relic of the past and shows that education, when rooted in community and struggle, can be powerful in the hands of the youth."
At the same time, UWC's Community Engagement Unit is leading a national initiative to strengthen the integration of community engagement into teaching, learning and research. The project is founded on a simple but powerful principle: that meaningful knowledge exists not only in lecture halls and laboratories, but also in the lived experiences, wisdom, and resilience of communities themselves.
Dr Samantha van Schalkwyk, Acting Director of the Community Engagement Unit, explains:
“As South Africa commemorates 50 years since the June 16 uprisings, this work nurtures a new generation of reflexive graduates who can critically examine themselves and society, recognise their responsibility in shaping positive change, and exercise their knowledge, skills and agency in the service of the public good.”
Together, these voices remind us that the spirit of 1976 is not confined to history. It lives wherever young people choose engagement over apathy, solidarity over indifference and hope over despair. This has always been part of the UWC story.
In the years following the Soweto Uprising, UWC emerged as a centre of critical inquiry, democratic engagement and intellectual resistance. Students, academics and leaders such as Richard van der Ross, Jaap Durand, Jakes Gerwel and many others helped transform this institution into a place where knowledge and social responsibility became inseparable.
That tradition continues today. Every day, I encounter students conducting groundbreaking research, exploring the possibilities of artificial intelligence, addressing public health challenges, strengthening communities, advancing environmental sustainability, and contributing thoughtfully to debates that matter. They remind us that the next generation is not waiting on the sidelines for an opportunity to contribute. They are already doing so.
Universities are not always comfortable places – nor should they be. They are spaces where ideas are tested, assumptions are challenged and societies engage honestly with themselves. At a time when public discourse is often characterised by polarisation, misinformation and quick answers to complex problems, universities have a vital role to play in fostering critical thinking, meaningful dialogue and democratic participation.
Deep within the heart of our university, a pocket-sized glass brick is embedded in the library floor. Many who pass by it may never notice it. Designed by the late Professor Jaap Durand, it allows sunlight to enter the auditorium below and serves as a memorial to 16 June 1976.
The library is often described as the heart of a university. It is where knowledge is pursued, ideas are challenged and new possibilities are imagined. The light that shines through that small glass brick reminds us that even in difficult times, hope endures.
It also reminds us that every generation faces its own challenges and its own responsibilities.
As Leonard Cohen wrote: “There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”
Fifty years after the Soweto Uprising, that light continues to shine through the courage, creativity and determination of young people who refuse to accept injustice as inevitable and who continue to imagine better possibilities for us all.
To our students: thank you for your curiosity, your courage and your willingness to engage with the world around you. Your voices matter. Your ideas matter. Your actions matter.
Professor Robert Balfour
Rector and Vice-Chancellor
University of the Western Cape
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Siviwe Mdoda, Coordinator of the Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education To mark this milestone, we will host a public exhibition in June 2026 that reflects on struggles for justice, dignity, and freedom – past and present. The Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education is an activist education organisation oriented towards supporting working class social justice movements, organisations and community groups with political education. We are based in Cape Town. Our name, Tshisimani, comes from a tshiVenda word meaning ‘fountain’ or ‘spring, ‘the water at the source’. This captures the driving inspiration of the centre to nourish, replenish and sustain. Tshisimani was established in 2016 to assist social justice movements and activists in challenging inequalities and supporting struggles for freedom and dignity. We do this by developing political education programmes with social justice organisations, to equip activists with the conceptual tools to resist inequality and to imagine and create alternatives. Our educational offerings range from one-off seminars, workshops and film screenings, to intensive residence-based programmes developed with and for specific social justice organisations, and monthly engagements with regular cohorts of activists. We also publish political education materials online for use and adaptation by activists wherever they may need them. Our core constituents are activists from poor and working class struggles with a particular focus on youth and women. Our strategic vision for the next five years is to extend our work throughout Southern Africa. |
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Dr Samantha van Schalkwyk, Acting Director, Community Engagement Unit (CEU) We aim to amplify the lived experiences, values, and leadership journeys of students, academics, and community partners, recognising them as co-creators of knowledge whose stories, struggles, and commitments shape socially responsive education. At its core, the project seeks to advance social justice-oriented curricula and teaching practices. Through this work, we position inclusive, activist, and community-engaged pedagogies as mechanisms for strengthening both the quality of our educational practice and the relevance of higher education institutions to society. Such a community-engaged curriculum has significant potential to foster social impact by creating opportunities for students to learn alongside communities; reflect critically on what social impact means to them, in their own words and on their own terms; and consider how they might contribute to positive change through their future professional and civic practice. As South Africa commemorates 50 years since the June 16 uprisings, such work nurtures a new generation of reflexive graduates who can critically examine themselves and society, recognise their responsibility in shaping positive change, and exercise their knowledge, skills, and agency in the service of the public good. In the spirit of Paulo Freire, the project recognises that meaningful social transformation begins with personal transformation, creating spaces for youth to discover their own passion for social change and their capacity to contribute meaningfully to it. |
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Hajar Kagiso Al-Tha’irah Ahjum-Mathee Ahjum Mathee, who is pursuing a Master's degree in Bioscience at UWC, is back home in Cape Town after participating in the international humanitarian initiative along with some 430 activists from across the world. Between 18 and 20 May, the Israeli military intercepted and boarded vessels in international waters - about 268 kilometres off the Gaza coast. For Hajar Kagiso Al-Tha’irah Ahjum-Mathee, Youth Day is a reminder that the democracy achieved 32 years ago remains, in many ways, a promise yet to be fully realised. The democracy that was signed on paper has not translated equally into the lived realities of many young South Africans. “The education curriculum has largely disadvantaged our generation, leaving the majority with an incomplete, narrow-minded approach to the apartheid regime,” often prioritises Western histories and revolutions while giving insufficient attention to the oppression and resistance struggles of African people. Youth Day should therefore also remind us of the values of solidarity, justice and humanity that shaped the country’s liberation struggle, and today’s youth should learn from the youth of 1976 by “keep pushing for a decolonised education system”. “But, while we wait, it remains our duty to make sure we read, educate ourselves and remain critically engaged,” she said. |
