Part 6 - The Story of my Life

 What follows in these tales from My life is a story I need to write. A story of life and drama that I long to write down. Not only for myself, but also as a reminder of things gone by. It is a story of forming and shaping and intrigue . But primarily it is a story about hope. If you choose to tread these pages with me, do so with reverence and kindness because one does not write these things lightly. If you are one who has the need to flirt a little with being nosy then perhaps you should pass by this story. For it is true and full. It needs not your judgement nor your advice. But if you want to read on, then read it as a novel should be read. For it is but just one story among many.

When Apartheid was the fashion and fear its friend

I grew up in the 70’s having been born in the last year of the 60’s. I always liked that. Being able to say something like, “I was born in the 60's”. Well Just!

At that time South Africa was ruled by fear and violence. The laws that set people apart and established white supremacy were firmly in place. I grew up into apartheid with my feet  and early life experience rooted in it. Our schools dictated to by it and spread its evil. Everything was permitted by its rotten stench.  Totally oblivious , as a child should be, I began to observe and see what that meant to those people  who touched my little life.

There was Regina the so called Isangoma or’ witch doctor’. She was terrified of frogs but not of snakes. She was a person full of hugeness and fun. She cleaned the house for my grandparents. Then there were the two men who worked for my grandparents in The Federation. Michael Marowatla and John Sebhekho. John was a printer and Michael worked in the office as a clerk

. These two men were to be a big influence on my life. They were lovely. Kind and generous and funny. Never a harsh word  despite their bleak reality because in the township Soweto, from where they came, was a place of brutality and rule. I am so grateful for having known them, the little that I did because of them I think I saw things a little differently to most white girls my age. Let me try and explain what I mean. Most white children my age would have a very limited experience of being with and “knowing” black people. The only contact we had with black South Africa was if and when a man or a woman came to work in our home as a gardener or domestic worker. This meant we had a very, very limited experience of knowing anyone other than perhaps a house “help”. My experience was not shaped by this limited knowledge and by having John and Michael in my life was indeed a broader and richer experience. This was in sharp contract to my grandparent’s narrow view of people based on nationality, skin colour and gender.

And so , in some strange way, their racist and skew thinking which was being poured out for the hungry readers across South Africa and indeed the world in the literature they generated,  was indeed the very place that I got to experience something of the other South Africa.  The one that was hidden behind fear and rules.

I remember the first time I experienced police brutality. It happened on a day like any other, although in South Africa in those days, there was no day quite like another. It was on this day that I witnessed a white policeman beating a young black man.

The man was powerless to defend himself against the might of the Boera Man in is yellow van. My fear for authority and especially policeman was born that day and into the future many like it. The hard, harsh arm of the law was in motion and it beat and killed whoever got its way.

Such was the context of life in South Africa for this little girl.