Gabriel Makin sits down with Omry Makgoale, a Morris Isaacson High School student who was one of the leaders of the 1976 Soweto Uprisings, which happened fifty years ago today.

Omry delivers a raw firsthand account of June 16: the explosive protests against forcing Afrikaans on black students, the brutal police massacre, and how it ignited mass mobilisation and drove thousands of young activists into exile.

As Omry says: "They helped to transform this country, although at the cost of their blood. We lost our colleagues, our classmates, they died and we buried them. Unfortunately, this country as it is at the moment, we need to do better for them to know where they are in their graves to feel that we are representing them well."

Omry also relates how he went into exile after the uprisings, and became a senior commander in MK, the ANC's armed wing. Fifty years later, he draws hard lessons for South Africa today, warning that real democracy demands direct electoral power for citizens to hold leaders accountable and crush corruption.