Cape Town – For Imraahn Mukaddam June 16, 1976 was the day he became politically concious.
As thousands of students mobilised around the country against the discriminatory education laws, Mukaddam from Elsies River was just 10 and barely understood.
This is the story for many activists and ordinary people living in Cape Town who have symbolic and even traumatic memories of the day.
Mukaddam said he knew little of what was happening in the country at a tender age, was flung into reality that month after his neighbour, a youth, was shot and killed during a protest and was inspired by many around him to start fighting for their rights.
“I was 10 years old in Standard 2 at St Augustine’s Primary in Parow,” he said.
“The most distinct memory I have is of the armoured security police vehicles that lined the road from DeLarey Road to Modderdam Road as students at the University of the Western Cape were protesting in support of the student uprising nationwide.
“As a 10-year-old I shared my room at our home in Belhar with two students who were studying at UWC. Late night discussions were always about politics from Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement to the Freedom Charter and even Karl Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’.
“Being exposed to so much political theory at such a young age had a profound impact on how I evolved as an activist later on in life.
“The one thing I remember clearly in the period shortly after June 16 was the brutal killing of one of our neighbours was shot and killed during a student protest on the Grand Parade in Cape Town.
“His death brought the reality of apartheid very close to home.
“My dad explained to me why he was a martyr for sacrificing his life fighting against the unjust apartheid regime.
“June 1976 is therefore the moment in time where I realised that apartheid was an evil abomination that had to be defeated.”
As a High School student in Bonteheuwel, People Against Gangsterism and Drugs member and community activist, Mogamat Keraan was politically aware and joined the Black Conscious Movement and even met Steve Biko and Jakes Gerwel and Dullah Omar.
He was placed into detention for six months as a teenager.
“On that day we were planning and discussing our protests which were going to take place and I was a student at Arcadia High,” he said.
“Three weeks after June 16, as the tone had been set, we left on a train to Beaufort West, it was burning due to the protests and in Port Elizabeth, we met Jakes Gerwel.
“As we stood meeting, they showed us the police who were in a tower watching us.
“We began running and went via neighbour’s backyard.
“After that I met Steve Biko and we all spoke the same language of consciousness.
“The policed eventually caught up with me towards the end of 1976 and I was taken from prison to prison and severely beaten.
“Our lawyer at the time was Dullah Omar.
“After that it became second nature for me to fight for what is right.”
Lavender Hill activist, LGBTQI activist and crime fighter, Clive Jacobs was 13-years-old in 1976 and remembers the day clearly when the police assaulted him and his mother inside their home.
“On that day, we lived in Lavender Hill already, children on the M5 were stoning vehicles and robbing people,’ he said.
“These children were being chased and the police ran up our steps, they (the police) confronted my mother at the door and I was standing behind her, I always latched onto her skirt, they came in and pushed my mother out of the way, they sprayed tear gas into her eyes, they pushed me out of the way.
“I remember crying and saying that they are hurting my mother.
“As the police left the house, they hit people on the staircase.
“My mother had to rinse her eyes under running water.
“That day was a horrible day, I thought I was going to lose my mother.
“That day will always remind me of what happened.”