Apartheid – – – Apartness

“Don’t question things. You are an American. Don’t rock the boat.”

This is what my grandfather told his six children in the late 60s and early 70s when they started questioning the system of apartheid. “We were in a bubble,” reflects my aunt Tara Marshall. She was only 5 when her family uprooted their life in Silver Spring, Maryland and flew 8,095 miles to their new home in Pretoria, South Africa. This was in 1963, just 15 years after the Afrikaaner National Party lawfully segregated society based on a race classification hierarchy known as apartheid. White-skinned people at the top, then Indian, followed by colored, with black at the bottom.

Tara grew up in a comfortable suburban home where two black maids did the cleaning and lived in a small one-room hut located behind the house. She walked to school passing restaurants, pools, and other establishments all bearing plaques that read “WHITES ONLY.” She spent Kindergarten through 12^th grade among her white, middle-class peers. Dutch colonization of South Africa during the Great Trek was the focus in history class and Afrikaans was the secondary language taught. The threat of black terrorists like Nelson Mandela was headline news. That’s just how it was.

Everything changed during a playdate when the mother of her friend welcomed the maids to join them at the table for a meal. This was unheard of. “Could blacks be an equal?” she asked herself. More doubt clouded her mind so she went to the library seeking answers to her questions. She found exactly one book about apartheid in which Afrikaner prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd explained the biblical backing for the segregation system that he helped implement. She found it so impossible to understand that she decided that it was clearly too complex for her. Later in high school, she attended a church youth group that hosted joint events with outside black congregations. This was her discovery of a diverse and welcoming world.

It’s no surprise that Tara only realized that she was a minority as a white in South Africa when she moved to the city to attend The University of Cape Town. The government had forcibly relocated thousands of people within each subdivision of the hierarchy to maintain a white minority rule and isolate non-white access to resources. She was part of an entire generation who had been raised to believe in the superiority of whites through government filtered education, news, and literature. This way of life altogether was now challenged by activism pushing for overdue change.

In the summer of 1976, her train heading home passed through a devastating scene of chaos and fire in Johannesburg. These were the infamous Soweto Riots of June 16th. School students revolted against Bantu education that forced them to learn Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch colonizers. The police force responded to the protests with gunfire, killing hundreds of mostly unarmed children.

The fight for equality was gaining traction every day despite increasing violence. Desmond Tutu became the first black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town. His activism inspired many like Tara to blur the lines separating people by color. As an active member of a local church, she was encouraged to embrace others and maintain hope for change. In the mid-eighties, she volunteered at an inter-racial youth summer camp. It was also through the church that she met her husband Terrance who had been conscripted into the army. He went to a military tribunal as a conscientious objector and was accepted on religious grounds for two years as a noncombatant. He spent most of this time working as a doctor in a hospital where he saw victims of the escalating political and social tensions. Those who rejected service on political grounds were sent to jail. It was an uncertain, dangerous time but as a couple, Tara and Terrence gave each other courage to press on.

In 1989 Frederik Willem de Klerk came into office and initiated the first formal desegregation policies. He released Nelson Mandela from prison and unbanned the African National Congress. Globally this was momentous, but the reality of desegregation was isolated anarchy. On one hand, the first black boy was admitted as a student to Pretoria Boys High where Tara worked, but on the other hand, evening sirens signaled that no blacks could be on the streets. Four years of unprecedented uprisings and killings followed the breakdown of the preexisting framework. Black on black crime was aggravated when the white orchestrated security apparatus made contacts with conservative black political groups. The white conservative right-wing Afrikaaner Resistence Movement attacked small townships. Many whites who felt intimidated fled to Australia, England, Canada, America, and New Zealand but Tara and Terrence stayed to witness the rebirth of South Africa.

After years of chaos, it all came together on April 27, 1994 during the first South African democratic free election. It seemed as though the queues of smiling faces snaked down the road for kilometers. Tara and Terrence cast their ballots off the beaten path at Haupt Bay Shanty Town. The only chaos that arose was the need for more ballots due to a surge in voter-turnout. When Mandela won, the world seemed to sing. The general white perception of him transformed from terrorist to dignified leader. “He forgave those who incarcerated him and was able to move forward, and for that” emphasizes Tara, “he is the epitome of graciousness.”

The fabric of society and the way in which it functioned changed overnight. At their home in George, my aunt and uncle soon had neighbors and coworkers who were previously outsiders. The integration process started recently and isn’t nearly far, but my cousins never had maids. Their classmates from all backgrounds have always been welcome at the dinner table. When they go surfing, they don’t see signs at the beach restricting others based on their skin. Although she recognizes that apartheid aimed to diminish the humanity of non-whites, Tara can’t help but feel that she was also deprived of a normal childhood. The fundamental difference between her son’s experiences growing up and her own is day and night, black and white.

Black and white.