The book Soweto '76, Reflections on the Liberation Struggles, released to mark the 30th anniversary of the student uprising, takes readers through the range of emotions experienced in Soweto on 16 June 1976 by means of poetry, oral testimonies, freedom songs, autobiographies, police files and a death toll list.

June 15, 2006

A NEW book, released to mark the 30th anniversary of 16 June 1976, captures the same sense as a visit to the Apartheid Museum: of being there on the day, dodging bullets and teargas, and carrying away your dead classmates.

Soweto '76, Reflections on the Liberation Struggles, released in Joburg on Tuesday, 13 June, is edited by Khangela Ali Hlongwane, Sifiso Ndlovu and Mothobi Mutloatse.

Soweto '76, Reflections on the Liberation Struggles

It takes the reader through the range of emotions experienced in Soweto on 16 June 1976 by means of poetry, oral testimonies, freedom songs, autobiographies, police files, a death toll list and a map. It's accompanied by graphic photographs, some I've never seen before, such as that of Hector Pieterson as a four-year-old, and Martha Ndlovu at the graveside of her 15-year-old son Hastings.

Hastings's father Elliot Ndlovu, a teacher in Soweto at the time, gives a heartfelt account of searching for his son, going back to the mortuary four times until finally finding the body, a bullet wound between the eyes.

Ndlovu ends his testimony with brave words: "The pain of losing him was there and it dates with time ... But already you can see that a lot has been done in such a short space of time, still a lot has to be done ... Those who lost their lives (including my son) were not lost in vain."

These experiences are juxtaposed with different journeys - those of renewal and discovery, such as that of journalist Gail Smith, a coloured South African. She starts her testimony with the words: "For most of my life I have lived in shame." She goes on to explain the devastating effects of apartheid on her self-esteem and consciousness, living a "schizophrenic life".

She explains how she went through a voyage of reclaiming her humanity in 1998 through researching and helping make The Life and Times of Sarah Baartman, an award-winning documentary, and another documentary on the process of bringing back Baartman's remains in 2002. Baartman was a Khoi slave taken from Cape Town to London by a British doctor to be displayed as a freak, to confirm the colonial stereotypes of what "natives" looked like. She died in Paris, abandoned and eking out a miserable living.

Peter Magubane exhibition

Smith has found herself, at last: "I know that my passage has been blessed by my brown ancestors, who were as keen to claim me as I was to seek them. Sophia led me to Sarah, who led me to self. Brown skin, how I love my brown skin. The circle is complete."

The list of deaths provided in the book is from a commission of enquiry into the period 16 June 1976 to 28 February 1977. It reveals how victims were killed and by whom - most were aged between 13 and 30, killed by the South African Police. It's a startling record, recording hundreds of deaths around the country in nine months of police brutality.

Replete with moving stories, it's not a book to be read in one sitting. You'll need to absorb the detail, think about the courage of those involved and reflect on how far the country has come since 1976.

Soweto '76, Reflections on the Liberation Struggles is available in leading bookshops and sells for R180.