Growing up in apartheid South Africa was all about division. A country that was clear about the division – whites and non-whites. But if you were Chinese, you were ‘more white than black’ so you were an ‘honorary white’.
In South Africa, white people could walk into the shop using the front entrance. Black people had to use the back door. There were park benches for ‘blankes’ (whites) and ‘nie blankes’ (non-whites). There were bus shelters for black people and different ones for white people. But actually, most whites had cars, so didn’t need to use public transport. You couldn’t even kiss someone of a different colour!
Putco Buses
I remember on cold winter’s mornings seeing the blue ‘Putco’ buses bring black workers from the township of Soweto, driving through the suburbs of Johannesburg. These buses were obviously not maintained as they were filthy and there was black smoke billowing out from underneath and behind. The back of the bus was pitch black. They were rammed to beyond capacity and the windows had fogged over. All along the bus windows where circles wiped out and black faces peering out at the ‘white’ world.
Mugga
Mom and I had a maid. Her name was Margaret, but I was only 18 months old and couldn’t say ‘Margaret’. I called her Mugga. Mugga used to tie me on her back with a blanket while she did the housework. African women across the continent use brightly coloured blankets to keep their children firmly on their backs. Mugga used to do our washing in the bath and one of my earliest memories is looking over Mugga’s head, while she leaned over the bath, scrunched our clothes in the water.
The 1970s
In 1976 I went on holiday with family friends. We stopped at a garage for a comfort break. My friend, who could read, took me by the hand to follow the toilet signs. We found some toilets around the back of the building, and I remember seeing two robust ladies, dressed in wonderfully bright colours and the most amazing headdresses.
Thinking back, I realise now, that they looked a bit perplexed as we came into the toilets. But we used the loos and as we came out to wash our hands, my friend’s mother burst into the toilets, grabbed us by the wrists, (you know how you grab a naughty child) and dragged us out.
“Those toilets are not for us to use. They are for black people!”
When we got home, we were both stripped naked, made to stand in the bath, while our bottoms were scrubbed pink because we had sat on toilet seats sat on by black people.
Roots
It is difficult for people outside of South Africa to understand how little we knew about the situation inside the borders when we were actually in it.
Every South African has a turning point, a realisation. In 1986 there was a bomb explosion in Pretoria. On the news we saw a few blown out windows and cordons across roads while investigations where on-going. But remember, our news was heavily censored.
The ‘penny dropped’
At school, my French teacher, Mrs Schaller, had French magazines at the back of the class for us to enjoy when we had finished our work. As I opened the magazine, I was confronted by a spread of photographs about the bomb in South Africa – bodies strewn across roads, cars burnt out, blood on the pavements. From that moment I was a different person…
I sobbed in my mother’s arms because I was white.
I am who I am because of my parents, where I was born, the culture I grew up in, as well as the circumstances of life in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. South Africa is who I am!
I have HEARD gunshots in the night
And SMELT the air pollution from the townships with no electricity
I have SEEN the pain of apartheid
But my soul has been TOUCHED by a country that has given me passion and compassion to make a difference.
Madiba
As the great Nelson Mandela said, “It is what we make with what we have, not what we are given, the separates one person from another”.
This was my 5 minute Lightning Talk at the Wells Festival of Literature. I have also delivered this online for the South African Chamber of Commerce UK. You can see my 5-minute talk at 18 minutes into this video.
I deliver this expanded talk at business events, charity fundraisers and community groups. Please get in touch for more information: dawn@dawnadenton.com
