Vorster’s Diabolical Reaction to Unrests Based on Tiro’s Speech
On 6 June 1972, the Johannesburg newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail, wrote the following in its first page, “… we have policemen who … may well have to believe that every baton blow they strike is a blow against communism.” This was in reaction to the banning of public meetings and demonstrations through a proclamation issued by the apartheid Prime Minister B.J. Vorster following students’ protests in universities throughout the country. Vorster, characteristically used the Nazi big lie, and ascribed the student unrest to “foreign agitators”, “Communist agitators”, while the Principal of the University of Durban-Westville attributed the students’ unrests there to “extraneous forces” – the Natal Indian Congress and SASO (South African Students Organisation).
On 29 April 1972, during a graduation ceremony at the University of the North (now University of Limpopo), which is colloquially known as Turfloop, the President of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC), Onkgopotse Tiro, made a critical speech of the apartheid tertiary education system that resulted in widespread demonstrations and strikes at all Black universities and some White campuses as well.
Scores of White students who participated were arrested after the police had baton-charged their demonstrations, at least one of which was held on the premises of St George's Cathedral, Cape Town, on 2 June 1972. The brutal a
