The riots broke out in Soweto on June 16, 1976 when police fired on a group of school children demonstrating against the use of Afrikaans as a teaching medium in the schools. Within a short while the disturbances had spread over most of the country but Cape Town remained comparatively
During the two months that the Cape remained isolated from the violence, which showed no sign of abating, Maria Tholo's biggest concern was her father. He had suffered a stroke and with much difficulty she had persuaded him to hand over his house to her younger brother, Isaac, a Nyanga shopkeeper, and come and live with her and her family in Gugulethu, where she could care for him. Maria was in her forties, a housewife and mother of two daughters. She was not originally from the Cape but her teacher parents had moved there forty years earlier. Her father was a self-made man. His family were labourers, country people, but considerable effort he had scraped to a young adult.
