By the end of this exercise, you can tell the story of South Africa’s road to democracy — putting the simple past, past continuous and past perfect in the right order.
Free Year 10 English practice: a family story from apartheid to the 1994 election, drills on narrative past tenses, and a caption to write. B2/C1.
Read the text carefully, then answer the questions below.
My grandmother Naledi was born in 1955 in Soweto, a township outside Johannesburg. Under apartheid, Black families were forced to live separately from white South Africans, and the schools in the townships were deliberately kept worse: the government had decided that Black children should be prepared mainly for manual work. Naledi wanted to train as a nurse.
In June 1976, when she was twenty-one, students in Soweto marched against Afrikaans being forced into their classrooms. Police opened fire, and Naledi, who was standing near the front of the crowd, carried a wounded boy to safety. She has never forgotten that day. Her school stayed closed for months, and she had to leave to help support her family.
For the next eighteen years, little changed. Naledi cleaned offices in the city; without her school certificate, she could not get a place at a nursing college. Then, in 1990, Mandela walked free; four years later, on 27 April 1994, she voted for the first time. She was thirty-nine. “I stood in the queue for six hours,” she told me, “but I would have waited six days.”
South Africa had lived through decades of injustice, but that morning it chose something new. Mandela became the country’s first Black president, and my grandmother, who had never been allowed to vote, finally had a voice. In 2024 she voted for the seventh time — and this time, she says, her vote was for her grandchildren.
1 Where and when was Naledi born?
2 Why couldn’t Naledi train as a nurse?
3 What did Naledi do during the 1976 uprising?
4 What does Naledi say about the queue at the 1994 election?
5 In “the government had decided that Black children should be prepared mainly for manual work”, why is had decided in the past perfect?
6 (Review from an earlier unit) In “Black families were forced to live separately”, what voice is the sentence in?
Choose the past form that fits each sentence: simple past, past continuous or past perfect.
1 By the time Mandela left prison, he ___ 27 years behind bars.
2 Naledi ___ for the first time in 1994.
3 While she ___ in the queue, she thought of her father.
4 The apartheid government ___ to power in 1948.
5 Most Black South Africans ___ never voted before 1994.
6 From 1962 to 1968, she ___ primary school in Soweto.
7 When the radio ___ the results, people ran into the streets.
8 By 1994, Naledi ___ to vote for almost twenty years.
Markers like by the time, before and since decide the tense. Choose the correct word or form.
1 ___ Mandela became president, he had spent 27 years in prison.
2 By the time Naledi voted, she ___ for almost forty years.
3 It was the first time she ___ in a national election.
4 ___ the flag rose over Pretoria, the crowd fell silent.
5 ___ the celebrations began, it started to rain.
6 Naledi had lived in the same street ___ 1955.
7 Two years ___ the election, South Africa had a new constitution.
8 She had never ___ hope before that day.
Your school is preparing a “Living History” display about the road to democracy, together with a partner school in South Africa.
Write the display caption (60–100 words) that tells Naledi’s story for visitors. Use at least three different past forms (for example: was born, was standing, had decided, voted) to order the events clearly.
Review your answers below, then send them to your teacher.
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