A Child Called Freedom

A CHILD CALLED FREEDOM commemorates the Soweto Uprising of June 1976, when 15,000 black schoolchildren took to the streets to demand a better education. The police opened fire on unarmed teenagers, and hundreds were killed in what has been described as the apartheid regime's single biggest massacre of black people. The event was a turning point in the world's view of the regime. Years later, living in Soweto, Lee comes across a boy called Freedom, and a new South African tragedy: this time a black government's woeful neglect of its citizens. While honouring the youth of '76 and Mandela's peerless legacy, in A Child Called Freedom Lee delivers a searing account of the ANC's betrayal of its own people. 'If ever there was a book for our time, Carol Lee's A Child Called Freedom is it. Part memoir, part historic account, it weaves together voices speaking across the years.' - Western Mail 'Thirty years on, the word 'Soweto' still tolls like a mourning bell. Lee sees through her own eyes the present South Africa where education is still difficult and democracy a weasel word.' - The Times 'Carol Lee has painted us a picture of what happened that fateful winter morning... It is a picture that deserves to hang on walls. It deserves our attention.' - The Zimbabwean