A Boy Called Freedom

I did not see him approach. The warm air and dusty ground by my side were empty one minute and taken, the next, by a slight child who I thought from his thin arms and legs, was around nine years old.

His expression grave, his clothes clean and pressed in this, the poorest part of the township, we began to talk…

Carol Lee returns to Africa to find the place of her childhood both changed and hauntingly familiar.

In Soweto, the place where hundreds of protesting schoolchildren were killed in 1976, she meets, by chance, one hungry child, a boy called Freedom.

As the links emerge between Freedom’s story and the Children’s Uprising, Carol begins a personal quest.

Her journey brings her to the leaders of this extraordinary event, revealing how their courage and spirit helped change a nation and why, for the shining lights of the class of ’76, speaking the truth mattered more than their lives.

A Child Called Freedom gives an inside view of South Africa’s struggle to meet its past as well as its future and brings together the remarkable story of two very different African childhoods.