lotus eater

“Peaceful resistance during apartheid is nonsense, even to a child. Tutu recalled a moment when he was speaking in a meeting about peaceful change.
After the meeting, a twelve-year-old boy approached him. 'Bishop Tutu, I heard what you said. Do you believe it?' Tutu said he began to hem and haw and evade the question. The boy, sensing his inability to answer him straight on, issued a challenge: 'Can you people, with your eloquent talk about peaceful change, show us what you have achieved with your talk? And we will show you what we have gained with a few stones.' The boy was referring to the Soweto Uprising of 1976, in which over twenty thousand South African schoolchildren protested the introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in Black and Bantu schools. Hundreds of children were shot at or wounded, and sixteen were killed, by the police. The violence went on for three days and drew international attention. Thousands of children were harmed, but even though they were outmatched by police forces, they physically fought back and won the world’s support. Tutu admitted that he did not have any evidence to show him. Yet the boy could point to the fact that Afrikaans was no longer the compulsory language of instruction. He could point to new school buildings that the South African government had put up as a result of all their activism. He could point to the fact that the South African government was putting more money into Black education than they had before, largely in response to what the young people had done. Tutu conceded, 'And so in some ways, he was right.' Even a child understood the efficacy of force and the limitations of nonviolence.”
― Kellie Carter Jackson, We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance