I was editor of Sowetan from 2004 to August 2008. It was as exciting as it was scary. I had just landed my dream job of editing an iconic newspaper I’d grown up reading, first as the World, which brought us the first images of the June 16 Uprisings, shattering our childhood innocence.

Those images – of raw anger displayed by schoolchildren in a standoff with police armed to the teeth, and the photo of a lifeless Hector Pietersen, who at 13 years of age was my age – had a profound impact on me and my peers. We ceased being children and became young Azanians engaged in the fight for black liberation...