Author & Publications

I am the daughter of anti-apartheid activists, and the Soweto Uprising of June 16,1976 was a pivotal event for both my country and my family. It was the day when thousands of Black South African pupils took to the streets of Soweto in protest against apartheid education. Met with brutal police force many never returned home. The events of that day also reverberated through the walls of my family home in Soweto’s Orlando East.

In my book “The House at 6001” I trace the intertwined lives of my parents, aunts and uncles who gathered, organised and resisted within my grandparents’ four-room Soweto house. From banning orders and exile to late-night parties filled with music and defiance, their story captures both the intimacy and the enormity of South Africa’s liberation struggle.

At its heart, it is a story about people, relationships, and family, in the context of brutal repression. It is about the personal cost of taking a stand for freedom. In writing it I was forced to examine my own relationship with my country, and the sense of loss and dislocation that came from having grown up in exile.

But this is also a story of love and healing, and I hope readers can see parts of themselves in my journey. I hope too that I have shown that history is not so much made by great men, as lived by people whose names may not be widely known.

Sunday Times book of the month
https://www.news24.com/life/books/extract/book-of-the-month-the-house-at-6001-moving-m emoir-of-a-family-facing-the-soweto-uprising-20260503-1058

Mandy Wiener

On this new episode of The Speakery Live, Mandy Wiener talks to journalist and broadcaster Lebo Diseko about her powerful book “The House at 6001: A memoir of Uprising and Exile”.