A predominantly Black urban area, south-west of Johannesburg in South Africa. In January 1976 Black schoolchildren demonstrated against legislation proposing to make Afrikaans the compulsory language of instruction, and police broke up the demonstration, using guns and tear gas. This triggered off a wave of violence; by the end of 1976 some 500 Blacks and Coloureds, many of them children, had been killed by the police. The plans for compulsory teaching in Afrikaans were dropped. Thereafter, until the multiracial elections of 1994 that ended White minority rule, the anniversary of the demonstration was marked by further unrest.