The documentary Salt River High 1976 – The Untold Story, featuring the arrest, detention, trial and acquittal of 10 pupils, a parent and two teachers involved in the largest political demonstration in the CBD since the 1960s, will be screened at Parliament on Friday.
The producer and director of the hour-long documentary, 56-year-old Anwar Omar, who at 17 had been the youngest among the arrested individuals at the time, said on Tuesday: “I am screening the documentary in Parliament as part of the Heritage Month events. So, in a way, after 42 years, this story is making its way to Parliament after all.”
Omar said one of the events depicted in the documentary is a protest march that occurred on September 2, 1976, and at the time had been the largest anti-apartheid political demonstration that managed to reach the CBD since the 1960s.
“That demonstration targeted Parliament, but never reach there, as it was violently dispersed by the (apartheid era) security police at the (CBD’s) Golden Acre. This is extensively covered in the documentary,” he said.
Accompanying him to Parliament will be some of the people featured in the documentary, who had been incarcerated at the time.
“Many of the current members of Parliament lived through those turbulent events of 1976, and might even have participated in many of those anti-apartheid events,” Omar said.
He has screened the film on June 16 at the Castle of Good Hope, the District Six Museum and the Palestine Museum in the City, and subsequently at the Kaleidoscope Jazz Cafe in Claremont.
It will also be screened in Salt River free of charge as part of the Salt River Society’s Heritage Day (September 24) programme at the Salt River Policy Institute from 2pm to 5pm, said Omar.