It was mid-1975. Cliff Saunders, then a rookie TV reporter, was wandering around the SABC's newsroom when the news came through: someone was holding people hostage in the Israeli Consulate in Fox Street.
Television had not yet arrived in South Africa. A date had been set for launch for later that year, but this very visual news story was just too great to ignore...
"It was quite a scene when I arrived with the cameraman," Saunders told us this week.
"Bullets flying, police dogs chasing us, cops firing wildly at the building whenever they saw the camera pointing at them ... Massage-parlour women offered us a 'quickie' as we bounded up the stairs of a ramshackle building to get to a vantage point.
"When I got back to the office, I was told this would be the first news bulletin to be screened - and that I had better get going and edit it. For 20 solid hours, members of the crew were on duty outside the beleaguered Fox Street building, filming every tense moment," reported the SABC's Radio and TV magazine in 1995.
But their dramatic pictures were not flashed onto South African screens. The SABC had its TV news crew in place, but it did not yet have a TV service.
"Undaunted," reported the magazine, "the crew pulled out all stops and gave South Africans their first taste of hard-hitting TV news on Monday May 5 1975 - the day the SABC officially introduced test transmissions in this country."
The man who was responsible for the Fox Street seige, David Protter, was sentenced to 25 years in jail for what turned out to be one of the worst shooting incidents in the country's history. Protter shot 45 people and killed one.
He was released from prison in 1990. But his deeds marked an unforgettable moment in South Africa's media history, creating huge opportunities for propagandists - and, later, for great change.
May 5 1975 was the turning point, with TV officially launched on January 5 1976, transmitting on a single channel known simply as SABC TV for 37 hours a week.
But why did it take so long for us to get television? Amazingly, research by the Université de la Réunion says we "could have become one of the first countries to get television - had it not been for financial reasons.
"In 1929, John Logie Baird, the inventor of television ... sent his revolutionary device to be shown to the public of South Africa (but) was turned down because of the heavy sums involved."
By the time Hendrik Verwoerd assumed power in 1958, "television had become the arch-enemy of Afrikaner interests and nationalist politics".
Indeed, it was a politically violent battlefield for the two major ideological forces in South Africa, says the research.
"For 10 years, the whole debate was constantly underpinned by these two world views at odds with each other: an urge to protect white domination and survival versus a traditional liberal conception of progress which made TV inevitable in a developed country."
The decision to introduce TV was in the hands of the Cabinet, particularly the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs who was in charge of broadcasting.
But between 1959 and 1968, the "little black box" met its staunchest opponent: the original "Dr No", aka Dr Albert Hertzog.
"He came to represent stubborn resistance to the medium," said the research.
"A very conservative mind, he did not have much of an innovative spirit and was little interested in technological advancement - unless it was of any good to Afrikanerdom."
But the winds of political and social change gradually "opened a breach for TV".
Looking back on TV's inception here, Saunders described briefly what it was like to work in the medium: "We were like kids with new, sinful toys." But what, for him, was the most memorable thing about the early days of TV?
"Seeing the 1976 (uprisings) shocked white South Africans and increased their fear of black anger. It encouraged black people to fight for their rights. "
And for children today, it's impossible to imagine life without it.