The Minister of Justice, Police and Prisons, Jimmy Kruger, received a report of a police investigation into Steve Biko's death as well as a post-mortem report submitted to the Attorney General of the Transvaal, signed by Professor Johan Loubser, Chief State Pathologist, Professor I.W. Simpson (University of Pretoria) and Jonathan Gluckman, pathologist appointed by the Biko family, all of whose findings were unanimous. Death had been caused by extensive brain damage. Biko had sustained at least a dozen injuries in the period of eight days and up to twelve hours before his death.

The South African government for the first time allowed 20 local journalists, five correspondents of international news agencies and two official photographers to visit the prison on Robben Island where 370 men, convicted under security legislation, were held. On the island, 12km north east of Cape Town, political prisoners of the anti-apartheid movement were kept together with hardened criminals.

On 27 June 1976, almost two weeks after the Soweto Uprising on 16 June, Kenneth Hlaku Rachidi, the National President of the Black People's Convention (BPC), announced that the riots had ushered in a new era of political consciousness. The Soweto Uprising, which was commemorated last week with Youth Day, was the result of increasing opposition to apartheid amongst the black youth of South Africa.

On 24 June 1976 the Principal's office in Hlengisi Primary, Nyanga, outside Cape Town is burnt down. The broader context of this is that on 16 June 1976 school children in Soweto, near Johannesburg, rose in protest against the oppressive new Bantu Education policy of Afrikaans as a teaching medium in their schools. Riots raged in the township for 3 days and quickly spread throughout the country.

Three days after the 1976 Students' Revolt the Government banned 123 people for their involvement and put a nation wide ban on public meetings. The protest was triggered by the announcement that Afrikaans would be used as a medium of instruction in Black schools. This failed to curtail mass action campaigns and the revolt spread across the country marking a turning point in the liberation struggle of South Africa.

The Nationalist party government announced its intention to consolidate the total number of separate 'homeland' areas from 113 to 36. The homelands were officially instituted in the 1950s as a form of apartheid separate development and a way to strip Black South Africans of their South African citizenship. The argument from the point of view of the Apartheid government was that Black South African people would be given the benefit of being able to self govern. The reality was that they became impoverished as cheap labour pools ruled by chiefs controlled by the apartheid state.

In a dramatic move, Minister of Defence P. W. Botha announced the replacement of South African police by the South African Defence Force on the northern borders of South West Africa (now Namibia). Botha believed that the military forces would be able to resist the pressure exerted by SWAPO.

South Africa suffered heavily in the international sports arena as result of its apartheid policy. Prior to the Tokyo Olympic games in 1964, South Africa was banned from taking part in the games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after serious threats by African nations and the Soviet countries. On 15 May 1970, the IOC extended South Africa's ban, resulting in the country's exclusion from the 1972 games in Munich, Germany until the 1996 Atlanta games.

S.P. Botha, Minister of Water Affairs, proposes new schemes to ease the Western Cape's water supply problem During his opening of the Cape Show on 4 March 1970, Minister of Water Affairs S.P.