In 1976, Manenberg Avenue became a battlefield, with students, residents and teachers standing side by side against armoured Casspirs and security police firing teargas canisters into the yards of ordinary homes.
Julian Jacobs
There is a lie that has followed the so-called Coloured community for decades. That we sat out the struggle. That we benefited from apartheid. That June 16, 1976, was Soweto’s story and not ours. I am here to say that it is not true. I grew up in Manenberg, Cape Town. I was there. I was six years old when the riots that began in Soweto made their way to our streets, when soldiers shot at people on the pavements and shops were looted, and the smell of teargas settled over everything like a second sky. The community I came from produced some of the most fearless, most principled, most quietly heroic people this city has ever seen.
This June 16, I do not only commemorate the children of Soweto, though their sacrifice deserves every tear this nation has shed for them. I also commemorate the men and women of Manenberg who saw those burning images on a television screen or read a brief flash in the newspapers and decided that enough was enough. They answered Soweto’s call. And in doing so, they changed everything.
