About this episode
How South Africans won their freedom from the racist Apartheid regime and the Australians who helped them fight for it.
It’s 1990 and Sisonke Msimang is glued to the TV, watching Nelson Mandela, the world’s most famous political prisoner, walk free after 27 years. She’s weeping with joy for a country she knows and loves but has never seen.
Since 1948 South Africans have been divided along race lines, called Apartheid. Blacks, Indians and ‘coloured’ people are separated from white people, and cannot marry them, earn the same wage, or get the same education as whites. Blacks are simply cheap labour for the mines and for rich white families. Then in 1960 police open fire on a protest in Sharpeville, killing 69 blacks. This is a turning point: world leaders condemn the massacre, and inside South Africa, the resistance movement galvanises.
Sisonke’s dad Mavuso is a rebellious young man and dedicates his life to fighting for the freedom of his people. This commitment takes him all the way to Russia and an uncertain future.
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