By Melanie Verwoerd and Sonwabiso Ngcowa —

In their newly released book, 21 at 21: The Coming of Age of a Nation, Melanie Verwoerd and Sonwabiso Ngcowa write that the term ‘born free’ is highly contested. ‘Many young people refuse to be labelled in this way, not least because of the level of poverty they still experience. As one ‘born free’ put it to us, “How can we be called born free when we live like this?”’

To mark 21 years since the dawn of democracy in South Africa, Verwoerd and Ngcowa travelled across the country collecting the life stories of young people born in 1994.

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