The memory of 1976 is one of violence and courage and smoke and dust of course, but it is now a collectively owned memory, one that – if taken seriously – implicates us all as we chart the future.
The ANC would like to claim 1976 as its struggle but we know this is only partially true. The ANC was of course the best organised and most powerful voice of black South Africans outside the country and so it became the default home for student activists who fled in the aftermath.