Soweto revisited: I was there

Other motorists were visibly angry as we drove past in a blue-light brigade.

There was no FNB branding on the minibus taxis as we muscled our way along a slow-moving M1 towards Soweto with cops leading and following the convoy.

The bank was very vague about the purpose of the event. "Be part of history in the making," read the invitation.

We didn't know that we were on our way to be extras in a television advertisement. (You can spot me in the background chewing on a pen as the schoolgirl speaks.)

We also didn't know that the evening would have a political flavour.

It certainly did.

The Naledi Secondary School was the venue and Enos Ngutshane was the keynote speaker.

He told how he had attracted the attention of the Security Police more than 26 years ago, when still a pupil, after writing a letter to the then minister of Bantu education. He warned of "a problem" with the use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction.

In 1976, on June 8, two security policemen came looking for Ngutshane, but his schoolmates stood together and flipped over the officials' vehicle.

This, he claimed in his speech, was the real start of the Soweto uprising.

Not political?

Somehow it seems that every blue-light brigade has politics as a passenger.