Keywords

Introduction

The Convention on the Rights of Child, adopted by the United Nations in November 1989, was intended to represent a turning point in depictions and perceptions of children in international law and social policy. In particular, the Convention took the position that children were rights-holders who have views and ideas about their own lives and have a right to genuine participation in decision-making affecting them. Its centrality to the Convention is evidenced by the fact that the concept of child participation is included not only within the body of the Convention, but also as one of its four guiding principles (UN, 1989).

However, despite the vision behind the Convention and the excitement that the participation principle evoked around the world at the time of its adoption in the late 1980s, it was, from the outset, I will argue, limiting in its capacity for genuine transformational impact. This is primarily due to the fact that while the Convention foregrounds the importance of children’s views and involvement in decision-making, it also ensures that adults remain in control in deciding the terms relating to who participates, how they participate, the topics on which they participate and ultimately, the outcome of participatory initiatives. An analysis of the structure and organisation of these participatory events and projects also reveal the extent to which these formal participatory processes remain tightly regulated and controlled by adults who then proceed to facilitate or cultivate the ‘right’ kind of participation from a select group of children within projects and programmes (Wyness, 2009a, 2013; Horgan et al., 2017; Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008). As a result, what becomes apparent from these formal participatory processes is the strong emphasis placed on the creation of an enabling environment, primarily by government agencies, NGOs, or a research community, for the facilitation of children’s participation which is often seen as enabling them to be able to express their agency (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008). In this way, the control of children’s participation rights within institutions and organisations in particular is firmly handed to the management of adults. As a result, what emerges within the Convention is a persisting understanding of children’s rights as being a gift of adults which they then give to children—whether this gift is linked to children’s care and protection rights or their participation rights. This limitation surely then raises questions about the extent to which the Convention, a treaty regarded as representing a landmark due to its perception of children as subjects—rather than objects—of rights, actually represents a genuine shift from earlier human rights laws and social policies such as the 1924 Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child which explicitly depicted children in a passive light.

Therefore, this chapter seeks to contribute to existing bodies of literature that critically examine the extent to which the Convention and its attendant initiatives and policies around the world focusing on child participation represent not only a genuine shift in depictions of children within international law, but also a framework for the achievement of societal transformation, especially in relation to the position of children in many societies which is characterised by what Fraser (2005) calls status inequality and misrecognition. Thus, the inability of dominant participation initiatives to address this misrecognition that children in diverse contexts experience has led to the persistence of their exclusion and indeed, misrepresentation, from participation in mainstream social and political interactions. Specifically, the argument underpinning this chapter is that the vision of child participation in the Convention, and which is subsequently reflected in the language and concepts articulated in the Convention as well as in the practices it has inspired, is limited in the extent to which it can initiate genuine transformational change in society in relation to how children and their participation within their families, communities and societies are understood. The chapter will then proceed to call for the need to look outside of this dominant child participation framework in search for examples of genuine transformative child participation which see children engage in acts of self-representation independently or alongside adults in struggles for not only recognition, but justice, be it economic, political or social and in the process, contribute to societal transformation at a local, national or global level. It is important to note that at the same time children’s representation transforms societies, these actions also contribute to transforming children’s representation through the impact these acts have on the status inequality and misrecognition that affect children (see Intro this volume). A notable example of what may be considered non-CRC-framed children’s participation is provided through an analysis of one case study: the role of children in the struggle to end apartheid in late twentieth century South Africa. It will finally discuss the implications of such examples of children participating and transforming their society—either independently from adults or with adults—for dominant child participation and children’s rights discourses.

From Objects to Subjects of International Social Policy: A Turning Point Influenced by the Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Since the concept of children’s rights emerged and became widely recognised in the early twentieth century, the depiction of children in global social policy was primarily as objects who were dependent on adults to provide them with protection and care. These ideas are best reflected in the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which together, laid the foundation for the drafting and adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The adoption of the Convention by the UN General Assembly in November 1989 was seen to represent, by members of the international community, a new era in the perception and position of children in international law as it took the standpoint that children were rights-holders who can play an active part in the enforcement of their rights (Veerhellen, 1994; Sinclair Taylor, 2002: Alderson & Morrow, 2004).

Given this image of the child within discussions leading to the drafting of the Convention, the contents of the treaty placed particular importance on the concept of participation, most notably evidenced by its inclusion as one of the four principles of the treaty as well as articulated in numerous articles within the body of the Convention. However, the understanding of child participation within the Convention departed from earlier discourses. For instance, child liberationists in Western Europe and North America such as Holt (1974) and Farson (1974) have long argued that children, like all other members of society, ‘should have the right to a relevant education, to a meaningful job, to a supportive home, to personal property, to sexual relationships of their choice, to all available information without censorship, to expression of political opinions, and suffrage’ (cited in Margolin, 1978, p. 446; see also Grossberg, 2014). Thus, early understandings of child participation were both comprehensive in nature and reflected the encompassing nature of the common sense understanding of the concept.

However, with the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child almost 33 years ago by the UN General Assembly, the concept of child participation was redefined in several respects. Firstly, the concept became centred on children’s voices as is evidenced by the participatory-related articles in the Convention which refer to children’s rights to influence decisions made on their behalf, express their views, have freedom of thought, conscience, and religion and also their right to form associations. Therefore, it has been argued that, although like its predecessors (the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child), the Convention recognises that children need protection as well as social rights more generally, it goes a step further to acknowledge that they also have strengths and are not merely dependents waiting for adulthood to become full human beings, and hence, eligible for participation (see e.g. Sinclair Taylor, 2002). Secondly, the concept of participation as articulated by the Convention foregrounds the belief that adults are ultimately responsible for deciding which views expressed by which groups of children are acceptable and which are not. Hence, despite the fact that the Convention foregrounds the importance of children’s views and involvement in decision-making, it also ensures that adults remain in control of facilitating or cultivating the ‘right’ kind of participation from a select group of children within projects and programmes, the terms relating to who participates, how they participate, the topics on which they participate and ultimately, the outcome of participatory initiatives (Wyness, 2009a, 2013; Horgan et al., 2017; Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008). Thus, while child liberationists such as the aforementioned Holt and Farson adopted a more bottom-up or child-centred concept of child participation, the Convention’s definition and understanding appears to centre adults more closely within the concept of child participation.

Since its adoption, the Convention’s principles centred around the right of children to to self-determination and participation have gained enormous momentum in broader children’s rights discourses and has influenced the policies and programmes of many governmental and non-governmental agencies (both local and global) and, indeed, academic research projects. The resulting outcome is that today almost all mainstream conceptualisations, models and interpretations of the notion of self-determination as it relates to children and children’s participation rights largely link participation to the notion of children having a voice (see Hart, 1992; Lansdown, 2001; Chawla, 2001; Wyness, 2006, 2009a; 2009b, 2013; Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008; Wall, 2011; Kallio, 2012; Horgan et al., 2017; Twum-Danso Imoh & Okyere, 2020). In fact, as Wyness (2013, p. 342) states:

The CRC has been the catalyst and subsequent framework for developing policy at national, local and institutional levels, influencing professional practice-based initiatives for promoting children’s participation. (see also Horgan et al., 2017)

Thus, the years following the adoption of the Convention have witnessed numerous initiatives in countries around the world. For example, recent years have seen the introduction of children’s parliaments and mayors, the use of consultations with children as a central part of NGO programming and the increasing visibility of children delivering keynote speeches at global events address (see e.g. Wyness, 2006, 2009a, 2009b; Wall, 2011; Maclure, 2011; Thew et al., 2021). The resulting outcome of these initiatives is that today, a strong emphasis is now placed, in the programmes of international agencies and NGOs as well as in research projects, on foregrounding children’s voices and attempting to see the world from their perspective (Wyness, 2009a, 2009b; Horgan et al., 2017; Percy-Smith & Thomas, 2010; Percy-Smith, 2015; Kallio, 2012).

Despite the vision behind the Convention and the excitement that the participation principle evoked around the world at the time of its adoption, this treaty was, from the outset, limiting in its capacity for genuine transformational impact in terms of recognising children as agents in society (see Wyness et al., 2004: 83). This can be seen in a number of ways. Firstly, although numerous initiatives have been introduced to foster children’s participation, many of these are centred on understandings of child participation as children having a voice. That these voice-based participation initiatives have a role to play in the realisation of children’s rights is not in doubt given the subordinate position of children in many societies and their widespread exclusion from political discourses (see Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008; Wyness, 2009b, 2013; Horgan et al., 2017). However, in more recent years this voice—oriented understanding of child participation has increasingly become problematized (see e.g. Wyness, 2013; Larkins, 2014; James, 2007; Horgan et al., 2017; Percy-Smith, 2015; Twum-Danso Imoh & Okyere, 2020). For example, arguments have been put forward that maintain that focusing exclusively on voice while overlooking the multitude of ways in which children can, and do, already participate in the various contexts that exist in the Global South in particular creates ‘standard’ and ‘deficit’ models of participation (Wyness, 2013). This has led to a situation whereby the participatory activities of children from this part of the world are de-legitimised or considered deviant (Percy-Smith & Thomas, 2010).

A notable example is the idea of children having responsibilities to their families and communities which is especially evident in parts of the South. Specifically, at the same time as child participation as a concept has been promoted alongside the implementation of the Convention in diverse societies around the world, concerns have been raised about the responsibilities children have to their families and communities in parts of the South. For instance, in sub-Saharan Africa, the notion of children having responsibilities is a key component of the socialization process to ensure that children of different genders are equipped with the knowledge and skills to undertake the responsibilities expected of them as adult men and women in their communities (see Nsamenang, 2004; Lancy, 2012). However, these responsibilities children are expected to undertake are not allocated randomly. Chores are constantly monitored by adults within their family who gradually increase their responsibility as children prove their competence in a particular skill or task until it is clear that they are able to engage in work that is normally reserved for adults (see Nsamenang, 2004; Lancy, 2012). Despite the socialization rationale underpinning the notion of children having responsibilities in contexts across the continent, much of this work tends to be branded by international advocacy groups as exploitative and an abuse of power by adults which deprives children of their rights (Nsamenang, 2004). This perception stands in sharp contrast to the views of many children in these societies who see the undertaking of these responsibilities as a form of participation (see e.g. Twum-Danso Imoh & Okyere, 2020).

Secondly, even within this discursive notion of child participation, the limitations of the Convention are evident. For instance, while Article 12 stipulates that consideration must be given to the views of children, it also adds a proviso that this should depend on the age and maturity of the child. This effectively implies that interpretation of this article will depend greatly on how adults construct age, maturity, and capability in their particular social and cultural context. As Stasiulis (2005, p. 9) states ‘concepts such as “capability of the child” and “maturity” are always subject to adult interpretation’ (see also Wyness, 2006, 2013). Thus, in this way, the control of children’s participation rights is firmly handed to the management of adults. As a result, what emerges within the Convention is a persisting understanding of children’s rights as being a gift of adults which they then give to children, an accusation often levied at the 1924 and 1959 Declarations on children’s rights. This limitation surely then raises questions about the extent to which the Convention, a treaty that is seen as game-changing due to its perception of children as subjects—rather than objects—of rights actually represents a genuine shift from earlier human rights law and social policies which explicitly depicted children as objects of rights dependent on the charity of adults (e.g. see 1924 Declaration on the Rights of the Child). Therefore, while participation is included in the four underlying principles of the Convention along with protection and is equally weighted, it can be argued that in reality that is not the case as the principle of protection clearly trumps that of participation.

In relation to the formal participatory processes that have been inspired by the Convention in recent years, it is evident that there is a strong emphasis placed on the creation of an enabling environment, primarily by adults (government agencies, NGOs, researchers) for the facilitation of children’s participation which is often seen as supporting them to express their agency (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008). This maintenance of the control of adults within participatory initiatives may be best reflected in the language used in the relevant literature. Specifically, there is evidence of expressions such as ‘empowering’ children through participatory initiatives, ‘offering’ children the opportunity to participate, ‘enabling’ children to exercise their participatory rights and ‘enhancing’ children’s participation and empowerment. Even the definitions of child participation that have emerged in the years after the adoption of the Convention further indicate the underlying assumption in the language used that there is an expectation that adults are to retain control of participatory processes while at the same time ensuring that they provide or give opportunities to children. Overall, a review of a range of definitions provided by numerous commentators (Sinclair, 2004; Hart, 2007) point to an understanding of child participation which is founded upon adults giving children a voice or space to express their opinions. Van Beers (1995, p. 4), for instance, defines participation as:

Listening to children, giving them space to articulate their own concerns and, taking into account the children’s maturity and capacities, enabling them to take part in the planning, conduct and evaluation of activities, within or outside the family sphere, which may imply involving them in decision making.

Thus, central to this definition is the adult who plays a listening and facilitating role in fostering the participation of children in a given context. Research scholarship has not been immune to these assumptions. In an edited volume more recently produced by Campbell with her colleagues (Campbell et al., 2011, p. 5), they state in their introduction that each project described in the collection of chapters they had compiled ‘attempted to facilitate or develop young people’s capacity to exercise agency, by ensuring that to varying degrees their experiences and voices were represented and their participation encouraged’ (see also Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008). Again, here, it is the adult researchers and their attempts to ‘develop’ and ‘encourage’ young people’s agency which is centred.

The use of language in these ways in the literature appears to suggest that children’s enactment of participation, or their potential to express agency, is not an act which they can initiate and drive themselves and instead, has to be elicited, facilitated, mediated, encouraged, structured, or cultivated by adults. This can partly be attributed to the emphasis placed on encouraging children’s civic participation which largely takes places in the public sphere (Horgan et al., 2017), leading to their participation becoming institutional in nature. This, consequently, leads to a situation whereby adults are required to mediate or determine the framework of participatory initiatives due to the fact that in these spheres adults are in positions of power and responsibility (Wyness, 2013). This demonstrates that in an era dominated by the emphasis placed on child participation as voice which, in turn, has been foregrounded during a period, at least in international law and policymaking, centred around underscoring children’s rights and the recognition of children as social actors, the approaches adopted assume that ‘children require to be “empowered” by adults if they are to act in the world’ (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008, p. 503; see also Fuchs, 2019). The problem, Gallacher and Gallagher (2008, p. 503) argue, within participatory research processes where adults develop the participatory techniques to be employed bearing in mind their desire to facilitate children’s effective participation is that such approaches risk ‘perpetuating the very model that they purport to oppose’.

This underlying belief that adults, within institutions and organisations specifically, are required for children to enact agency or to be able to exercise their participatory rights results in adults being positioned as those who determine which children participate, how they participate and what impact their participation can have. In fact, it can be argued that through the formal initiatives developed to promote or facilitate the ability of children’s participation, strategies are actually being developed to not only regulate and control children, but also work to limit and restrict them (Wall, 2011; Holzscheiter et al., 2019; Larkins, 2014). Larkins (2014, p. 9), for example, claims:

Children’s status as citizens is also undermined by social welfare interventions and laws that apply levels of control, limitations in rights and restrictions in access to certain public spaces, that are not imposed on adults.

Hence, through these formal processes of participation ‘children are made subjects of governance’ (Holzscheiter et al., 2019, p. 4; see also Sandin, 2014).

The tight regulation and control of participatory processes leads to questions about the extent to which participatory initiatives serve the interests of children in the long run. This is a point raised by Campbell and her colleagues (Campbell et al., 2011, p. 2) when they make the argument that it is essentially not possible to separate children’s rights from those of adults. The resulting outcome, then, is that ‘when adults invoke children’s rights it is simply to promote adult agendas’. Wyness (2009b, p. 540) supports this when he also notes that despite the claims by adults of their advocacy efforts on behalf of children, there is the potential that it is the interests of adults that determine what are in the best interests of children. This situation comes about because of the very nature of advocacy efforts which mean that it is rare that children’s voices are heard directly on issues that affect them. The logical question to subsequently pose is: what are these adult agendas that may be prioritised in participatory initiatives? A number have been pointed to explicitly or implicitly by commentators over the years. Gallacher & Gallacher (2008, pp. 503–504) specifically maintain that:

In order to be effective, governmental power depends upon knowledge of the population being governed. We want to suggest that current enthusiasm for practical, ‘policy-relevant’ social research on children is closely connected to adult anxieties about young people: how to improve them, make them more employable, more productive and healthier; how to encourage and regulate their moral conduct and to participate in democratic politics.

One particular issue that ties these various desired outcomes that participation should inculcate is the notion of children as future citizens which is a clear thread in the literature as one key motivation underlying participatory processes (see Wyness, 2013; Horgan et al., 2017; Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008; Wyness et al., 2008). This links closely to what Jenks (1996) has called ‘a vision of futurity’. This emphasis on developing future responsible citizens is evident in how both the academic and non-academic literature has talked about participatory processes. For instance, Partridge (2005) asserts that the process of participation itself can give children the chance to learn more about their environments, which ultimately benefits them as it increases their knowledgeable and facilitates their ability to become responsible inhabitants in their communities. In turn, Kirby and Bryson (2002) argue that children who are permitted to participate may be of greater benefit to the community itself as they tend to be in a better position to take up roles of responsibility upon maturity. Thus, this provides a rationale for the strong emphasis normative forms of child participation place on citizenship activities which are seen to prepare children for their role as full responsible citizens of society who will eventually be able to work and, of course, vote, and help to sustain law and order as well as democratic structures once they achieve adulthood (Wyness, 2009a, 2013). Interestingly, this rationale for participatory processes with children suggest that dominant understandings of child participation have become linked with notions of socialization whereby governmental or non-governmental agencies become agents of socialization working to prepare the child for responsibility and citizenship within society. While these processes emphasise the empowerment and inclusion of children, there is a hint, in these discourses, of traditional theories relating to socialization which were promulgated by scholars such as Talcott Parsons (see e.g. Parsons & Bales, 1956) which see the child as a rather passive being. This focus on children as producing future citizens within formal, dominant participatory processes is an indication that dominant understandings of child participation and childhood more generally may not be about, or for, children at all.

Decentring the Adult in Child Participatory Processes for Transformational Change

This critique about the limits of the transformational effects of Convention-inspired participatory definitions and processes builds upon existing critiques made by scholars from various disciplines who have long been concerned about the Convention’s paternalist framing (see e.g. Stasiulis, 2005; Liebel, 2002; Hashim & Thorsen, 2011). Using these critiques as a foundation, the main argument underpinning this chapter is that we need to recognise that if we are interested in looking for transformative instances of child participation, which is inherently linked to acts of self-representation by children, the Convention’s definition of participation and the attendant formal processes centred on the public sphere which it has inspired are not where we should focus our energies. These formal and public spheres of participation are limited in their transformational impact. Hence, in order to gain an insight into forms of child participation with transformative potential and impact, there is a need to go beyond the more formal initiatives which have hitherto been dominated not only by the notion of participation as voice, but have also been tightly regulated and controlled by adults. Instead, the suggestion here is that researchers and others need to cast their eyes elsewhere. The implications of this would require researchers to focus on bottom-up approaches to participation and the enactment of citizenship, possibly through small-scale everyday forms of persuasion and actions initiated by children themselves within the contexts in which they live their everyday lives.

This position garners support from a range of scholars coming from different perspectives. In line with their liberationist ideology, child protagonists suggest that true participation should be child-led as opposed to being determined by adults (Miljeteig, 2000). Participation under this ideology takes the view that children can act in their own names to defend their rights and they should, therefore, be given the chance to do so without restrictions. More recently, relevant scholarship has urged us to adopt an approach that foregrounds the everyday acts in which children engage by themselves, or with others, that are not under some regulation and control by adults. To do this we need to look at the mundanities of children’s everyday lives and identify the ‘routine, informal opportunities for meaningful participation’ (Horgan et al., 2017, p. 276). The work of Larkins (2014, p. 9) who adopts a relational approach to this issue is especially significant. Specifically, she makes the case that children’s citizenship is enacted in the home, school, leisure spaces, and is best reflected in transgressions and behaviours of resistance as well as through acts relating to ‘negotiating rules of social coexistence, contributing to socially agreed good and fulfilling their own individual rights’ (Larkins, 2014, p. 19). This then leads her to conceptualise children’s activities as either ‘acts or actions of citizens’ leading to an emphasis on children’s everyday practices of citizenship, which may have political significance even if they are not political in nature. This recognises the way children themselves enact citizenship instead of participating in the citizenship they are offered whether by NGOs or governmental agencies (see also Horgan et al., 2017).

Taking a Long Historical View to Understand the Transformational Potential of Children’s Participation: The Case of the Soweto Uprising of 1976

History may provide us with lessons about such bottom-up forms of everyday participation in which children have engaged. In fact, history teaches us that those we consider to be children today have always participated in their societies, often in ways that have contributed to transformations of some kind. Examples from the contemporary period which illuminate this point is the role many children played in the civil rights movement in the USA and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa in the latter half of the twentieth century (see also Wall, 2011).

In relation to South Africa, the role of children is especially notable during the Soweto uprising of the second half of 1976 as it illuminates very clearly the extent to which the participation of Black African children and young people who were in primary schools (both junior and senior stages) and high schools and who were aged 20 years old and under resulted in a transformation which overhauled the political and social structures of South African society. This action by Black children and young people in this context was provoked by the apartheid government’s decision that maths and social studies should be taught in Afrikaans in senior primary and junior secondary schools—a decision that the government had long planned, but started to put in place more concretely from 1968 onwards. This decision, which was eventually implemented in early 1976, was not popular with African adults and children alike, including teachers, many of whom did not speak Afrikaans and would, as a result, struggle to teach these subjects effectively to children, leading to a worsening of educational standards for Black children. In particular, teachers were concerned about the loss of critical thinking in students which would be replaced by a reliance on rote learning in Afrikaans due to their own lack of proficiency in the language (Ndlovu, 2004). There was also a concern that as teaching in English had also just been introduced in 1975 this meant that by adding Afrikaans as another foreign language Black children had to be taught in schools, this would lead to the loss of mother tongue language. Further, Afrikaans was also the language of the apartheid State and all its agents and thus, this decision:

represented the state’s assault on the language and culture of black people, on their future, and on their power and ability to effect changes in policies of immediate concern. In this case, the violence that was central to the practices and ideology of the authoritarian apartheid state had become central also to the lived experiences of historical actors during this time. (Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2000, p. 25)

As a result, children and young people, aged between 10 and 20, who were those most affected by these changes, sought to prevent them through low-key protests which took the form of class boycotts, school strikes and disruptions within schools in May and early June 1976. While parents and other adults did not support the imposition of Afrikaans in their schools, they sought to stop these actions and ensure children returned to school:

Concerned parents held emergency meetings with school board and homeland representatives. On 22 May 1976, a meeting of parents, Orlando-Diepkloof Zulu school board members, and Inkatha ye Sizwe members, led by Gibson Thula, the urban representative of KwaZulu, held a meeting at Phefeni Junior Secondary School. The meeting decided that students should return to school while the matter received urgent attention. But the striking students largely ignored this plea. On 3 June 1976 pupils at Emthonjeni, Belle, Thulasizwe, and Pimville returned to class. They had been told apparently that lessons in mathematics and social studies would be suspended for the time being. But students from other schools steadfastly continued with their strike action. (Ndlovu, 2004, p. 335)

These early actions by children were dismissed and ignored by the State (Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2000), leading them to intensify their plans for protest and make their voices heard. Final plans for a three-day peaceful demonstration to start on 16 June were made on 13 June. Following the meeting, an inclusive action committee was established and consisted of higher primary, junior secondary and high school students. It was this group that is believed to have coordinated the demonstration on 16 June. Another student leader has since outlined the initial intentions for 16 June:

Our original plan was just to get to Orlando West [Junior Secondary School], pledge our solidarity, sing our song and then we thought that is it, we have made our point and we go home…Neither did we expect the kind of reaction that we got from the police that day. (Ndlovu, 2004, p. 340)

In line with the plan they had developed, then, on 16 June thousands of children, some say 15,000 (Tin, 2001), others say 6000 (Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2000) started to march from their schools to central Soweto. As they marched, they sang, shouted, and waved placards with words such as ‘Away with Afrikaans’ and ‘Afrikaans is the language of the oppressors’ (Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2000). The police, who had been informed of their plans, deployed approximately 50 officers to the area to meet the procession of school children. The two groups met at 10.30 am on 16 June 1976 and tensions rose, leading the police to shoot into the crowd of children within one hour of the encounter, killing two children (17-year-old Hastings Ndolovu and 13-year-old Hector Pieterson). Many other children were injured on that day. This reaction by the police sparked the uprising which continued consistently for six months and carried on sporadically, in certain areas, until 1978. The subsequent unrest was not only in Soweto, but also across the country, including city centres and rural homelands (see Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2000).

Schools were burnt down, forcing many to close. Other buildings associated with the apartheid State were burnt down such as those relating to the Bantu Affairs Administration Board, Urban Black Councils, and post offices (Tin, 2001). Beerhalls, shebeens and bottle stores, which served adults within their communities, were also burnt down and liquor was destroyed. Barricades were set up by children in order to keep out the police and stop commercial transport from coming into Soweto. Those buses that sought to leave the area to go to central Johannesburg were firebombed and stopped by children. Children also sabotaged railway lines and signals. Street battles took place between children and police. School children initiated ‘stay aways’ whereby they sought to persuade or coerce adults to stay at home instead of going to work from August to November 1976. On the first stay away on 4th August 60% of workers stayed away. This figure is said to have increased for the next two stay aways, but reduced by the fourth and last one on November 1st of that year (Lodge, 1983; Tin, 2001).

That children have always been the symbol of the Soweto uprising has not been in dispute, but the extent to which they initiated, led, and organised the demonstrations on 16 June 1976 and the subsequent uprising has been downplayed by various actors, including the ANC (African National Congress) in the decades since (see Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2000; Tin, 2001). Instead, as Tin (2001) argues, the children who led and drove the Soweto uprising are represented (or indeed, misrepresented) in anniversaries held to mark the period, as martyrs who had their childhoods taken away from them and not as actors or subjects who played a significant role in a process which, ultimately, resulted in the end of the apartheid State. Instead, some accounts place emphasis on adults such as workers and trade union groups and members of the Black Conscious movement as those who were instrumental in shaping or influencing the actions that children took on 16 June 1976 and in the following months. Tin (2001) explains that this is due to the disbelief amongst commentators that children could be so dangerous and effective in ways that previous protests such as those that occurred in Sharpeville, in March 1960 consisting primarily of adults, had not been. Thus, in this way children’s self-representation for justice, which led to genuine transformative change for themselves and the wider society, had the consequence, arguably, of compounding their status inequality and misrecognition in their society in the immediate decades after, as efforts were made to downplay the agency they exhibited and, instead, foreground their passivity.

While indeed it is possible that some older children involved had been inspired by, most notably, the Black Consciousness Movement, which had had been gaining momentum in the country since the late 1960s and had found its way into some schools through a younger generation of teachers who were active in the movement (Moloi, 2011), it was children and young people who were in junior and senior primary schools and high schools who planned and organised and led the demonstration on 16 June, very often without their parents knowing (Ndlovu, 2004). As Tin (2001) asserts firmly, those who initiated and led the events of this period were clearly not university students. Instead, they were school pupils aged 20 and below. He points to photographs taken of the day of the demonstration on 16 June and claims that they show teenagers and school children wearing uniforms marching, shouting with clenched fists, waving placards and sticks. He goes further and claims that in these pictures from the first day no adults were present at all. Instead, it is only in pictures a few days later that adults start to be appear, but by this time everyone was on the streets and the adults captured in photographs were chasing school children with weapons (Tin, 2001). This centrality of children to the uprising is further supported by Pohlandt-Mccormick (2000) who states that according to the South African Institute of Race Relations, 89 of the dead in the West Rand area within the first two weeks of the uprising were under the age of 20, with 12 below the age of 11. This leads her to conclude that:

The students mobilized themselves and then accepted the responsibility that the events thrust upon them to continue to expand the battles for change, with varied success and at a great cost in death, imprisonment, banning, and exile. Since 1976, the struggle against apartheid has been politically successful. In this, the historical actors of the Soweto uprising played a major part. (Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2000, p. 27)

While the children had support from some adults, it is important to recognise that the conflict that occurred was not only between the children and the apartheid State and its attendant agents, but also between children and adults in their community, especially their parents, who they felt had accepted their subservient status within the country and had submitted themselves to the apartheid State and its rules. Fathers, in particular, were symbols of this parental submission as the strategies they had developed to survive were interpreted as weakness by their children (Tin, 2001). The fact that key places attacked by children included shebeens and liquor stores, which primarily served African populations, is an indication of the anger children felt towards their parents and the strategies the latter had adopted to cope with life in South Africa at the time. This disregard for their parents’ values was further illuminated by the fact that many children run away from home to join armed groups who were living in exile in countries such as Botswana without necessarily informing their parents (Lodge, 1983; Tin, 2001). Furthermore, attacks and threats children faced not only came from agents of State, but also from adults within their communities. For example, as a response to the stay aways children tried to impose on adults, an order from the Soweto Urban Black Council came which stated that children who stopped workers from going to work should be killed which was approved by the police. As a result, workers started carrying sticks and other such weapons to attack children who tried to stop them from going to work (Tin, 2001).

Such an example of children’s participation and organisation demonstrates the transformation that children’s collective actions can have on society. However, recognising this has to go along with acknowledging that such a bottom-approach centred on everyday acts of participation initiated by children themselves has its implications. In particular, such an approach means studying, and acknowledging, forms of child participation that do not always correspond with dominant children’s rights discourses or even ideas about children’s place and expected behaviours in society. Instead, such actions by children may include forms of participation that challenge adult authority and power at a state, community, and family level, thereby disrupting long-valued socialization processes and cultural norms that regulate adult-child relations as was the case during, and following, the Soweto uprising in South Africa. It also means recognising that child-driven participation processes may also be as unequal and exclusive as adult-controlled processes (see Wyness, 2009b)—something which is not too surprising as often, the interactions between children represents a microcosm of wider social relations. While this unbridled agency reflected in child-driven, bottom-up examples of participation may cause some concern to some, there is a need to recognise that processes for change are rarely smooth regardless of context. Conflict, rupture, and disruption are key features of any action for change, especially when it is both in response to social injustice and seeks an outcome which is genuinely transformational. This feature is constant regardless of whether the action for change is spearheaded by children, adults, or indeed, both, bearing in mind the interdependencies that exist between generations (Josefsson & Wall, 2020).

Conclusion

The key argument in this chapter is that while the Convention on the Rights of the Child did represent a turning point in representations and perceptions of children in global social policy, the fact that it places adults at the centre of determining which children participate and how they participate limits the transformational potential of any participatory processes that are inspired by the treaty. This is not to say there is no value in the, often public and formal, participatory initiatives the Convention inspires. It simply means that we cannot expect such efforts to engender significant changes to the status quo in terms of the status inequality and misrecognition that children experience in diverse societies, at least in relation to adults. This is largely due to the fact that child participatory processes, without genuine forms of representation, cannot result in a change that is transformative for children and their societies more generally. Therefore, such initiatives are limited in their transformational potential which fundamentally means that while some changes may be made here and there, the structures that ensure children’s subordinate position, or indeed, status inequality as Fraser (2005) puts it, in society persists. For child participation that has the potential for genuine societal transformation, there is a need to conceptualise self-representation as a key element of participation. This involves de-centring the adult within the concept and practice of child participation and foregrounding the actions for self-representation exhibited by children and young people themselves. Alongside this is the need to recognise that children do not need to be provided with, or encouraged to, take up spaces for action. They do so anyway with, or without, adult support. Certainly, history, from sub-Saharan Africa and, indeed, elsewhere including in parts of the Global North, teaches us that those categorised as children today have long demonstrated the capacity for self-representation in their efforts to address any injustice, they and their communities experience. The fact that there may be consequences for society as a result of this action taken by children is part and parcel of processes of transformation as all actions seeking genuine transformative impact—whether they are initiated by adults or children—lead to consequences of some kind.