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Veteran journo recalls front page that set off iconic brand

Schools story announced birth of Sowetan 40 years ago

A story about the SA schools population increasing by 100,000 pupils in 1981 got veteran journalist Len Kalane a spot on the front page of the first edition of Sowetan 40 years ago.

“The evolution of time is an amazing phenomenon. That story I wrote was about scale. At the time, SA had a population of 29m excluding blacks who lived in homelands. The 100,000 of new pupils was an astronomical number that time and that is why the story made it to the front page. Then township school kids were ordinarily in class at any given day or time. They didn’t roam the streets like they do today. It was strange for us to see so many of them walking the streets. That was unheard of back then,” said Kalane...

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