Marelise van der Merwe was born in Cape Town and has lived there for most of her life. “I have a passion for tabloids and trashy talkshows. My work experience ranges from teaching to translating to waitressing to jazz singing — all of which was worthwhile experience.”

The beginning of fear

Marelise van der Merwe

“At the time, I thought Cwytha, we called her Twighter (it was as close as we could get to the right pronunciation), and Ziggy and Pumie were a representative sample of black people. Two impressions of them stand out in my mind: one, that Shine was a pretty good Block player, but when she fell down one day, I was amazed that her blood was red …”

What I remember of Apartheid is mostly in fragments. These fragments usually take the shape of unanswered questions: things that puzzled me, but did not intrigue me overmuch.

When I was very small, I didn’t question the living conditions of black people because I never saw them. When I was a little older, many of the things I saw that I didn’t understand, I didn’t relate to the political situation. And when the first black children started coming to my school, my experience of the tail end of Apartheid had more to do with the constant surprises this hitherto unfamiliar species sprang on me, than with any moral queries on my part.

My earliest memory of any Apartheid-related experience was when I was still learning to talk, because my command of language was tenous at best. My mother was looking for a suitcase and, trying to be helpful, I told her “Daar’s ’n ou kaffer in die garage.”

My father took me aside and told me that was a word I should never, ever use. “Koffer,” he said. “Herhaal die woord: koffer.” I was somewhat surprised, because my father had never reacted so sternly when I made a mistake before.

I’m not sure where I would have heard that word, since clearly my parents weren’t in favour of using it. My parents were, as far as I could see, apolitical. My mother’s favourite simile, of her own making, was “as boring as politics”. My father, though against Apartheid, limited his political activity to writing articles that criticised Apartheid ideology. Because he worked at the University of Cape Town, there was some leeway for him to do this.

However, we remained members of the Dutch Reformed Church (PW Botha was a member of our congregation when he was in Cape Town). My mother, bless her, made it a matter of principle not to pay attention to the news because, she said, so much bad news was sure to poison the mind. Every Sunday she would wave at the nice bald gentleman, who looked so familiar, until my father decided it was time she knew she was waving at the State President. To this day, I don’t think she has ever voted, despite my sister’s and my assertions that not voting is to give a vote to your political opponent. As for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she argued at the time that it was both cruel and pointless to make people over the age of sixty testify, relating her knowledge to being a geriatric nurse.

After my parents divorced, my mother, my sister and I moved into a flat building in Mowbray. Mowbray being a “grey area”, I lived among people of all races. Our former domestic worker, Glenda, who had left us when she fell pregnant, came to visit us on a regular basis. I used to play with her baby while my mother and Glenda complained about men.

So I continued to think that Glenda had worked for us because she liked us, and that was that. It was only when I went to buy sweets at the bakery below our building and saw a poster with 3-d models of terrorist weapons, warning people to look out for them, that I began to wonder what was happening outside our flat. My sister, who has always had a taste for the ghoulish, told me in spine-chilling detail what each weapon could do. It was the beginning of chronic fear for me.

But things were happening fast. When I was in Standard One, the first black girl was accepted into my school. Her name was Shine. My teacher made a big fuss of her and told us we should be very glad she was with us. My mother took a liking to Mrs Shine and invited her over for tea weekly.

After Shine came Cwytha; (we called her Twighter — it was as close as we could get to the right pronunciation), and after her, Ziggy and Pumie. At the time, I thought they were a pretty good representative sample of black people. Two impressions of them stand out in my mind: one, that Shine was a pretty good Block player, but when she fell down one day, I was amazed that her blood was red; two, that all of them, especially Ziggy, had enormous houses and shiny cars. Not really having fully understood the Apartheid system, I thought it was something to do with all black people being really rich and living somewhere that had the car registration DIP.

After Shine, Cwytha and the terrorist awareness poster, there was a sudden increase in bomb awareness adverts on TV. Moreover, being older, I spent more time with friends’ families, and started piecing together that black people were a dangerous bunch. I had nightmares that people were coming to blow me up or — worse — that someone would come in with one of the weapons on the poster and blow my head into a thousand pieces in three seconds. To this day, when I see a plastic bag in a public bathroom, I give a little shudder. I started checking for black people under the bed.

Now, I can recognise these as common symptoms of white fear. My mother has since told me that her older sister could never sleep at night when she was a girl, because she thought The Blacks were coming to get her. My grandmother stayed in Kenya with my grandfather during the Mau Mau (he was a historian and therefore, according to my grandmother, made a living out of “chasing trouble”). She went nowhere without a hunting rifle even though, as we all know now, only 32 white people were killed during the Mau Mau relative to thousands of Kikuyu.

When she returned to South Africa, she kept the rifle. She was convinced she would need it.

Looking at three paranoid, troubled, insomniac generations, I’m beginning to think the former government owes a big apology to my family. They owe it to us on two counts: firstly, for the fear they drummed into us and secondly, for treating black people so badly that today I feel guilty for saying that, as a white person, I suffered as well. It was years before I could walk past a black person on the street at night without assuming I would be mugged. Changing a constitution is child’s play compared to changing the fears and beliefs that have been drummed into a person. I look at my mother who, despite never completing even her matric, is trying so hard to change her beliefs that she’s fallen into the “I love all black people” generalisation trap. The last time she tried that line on a black person, he told her to stuff off. She cried for hours. She doesn’t understand why he was so angry with her, and I don’t think she ever will.

Things are looking brighter for me, though. Finally, I’m beginning to contextualise my experience of Apartheid. I’m becoming less afraid of talking about race, and as a result, I’m learning more. Two narratives stand out for me. My adored former housemate, Nomfundo, has told me about growing up with a Dutch Reformed grandfather and a sangoma grandmother, having piano lessons during the day and dodging bullets and tokoloshes at night. Today, she still isn’t sure where she fits in, juggling her private-school education — courtesy of a bursary — with her township roots. This has taught me that many South Africans are still struggling to build their identity.

Moreover, racial discrimination wasn’t the only kind. My girlfriend, Maria, who is as Afrikaans as can be, has told me a chilling story about her friend, Schalk, who let slip in 1991 — the year he met her — that he thought she’d had a very nice figure as a teenager. Shocked, she asked him how he knew that. A few days later, he produced a copy of a document about her. He’d been in the military for a number of years during Apartheid, and had continued access to the intelligence service’s files. If he made a new friend, he checked if there was any information on them.

Alongside a full-length photograph of Maria in a swimming costume were the words: “Suspected homosexual.” More frighteningly still, at this stage, Maria was still leading a heterosexual lifestyle. Apparently, the state knew more about her than she knew about herself.

I don’t think Apartheid is over; at least, for me it isn’t. It intrigues me too much to know that I missed out on such a large area of my life. I want to know what my childhood was really like. I’ve realised that the persecution went much further than I imagined, and that the suffering continues, despite regime change.

Moreover, every time I meet a person, it strikes me that they, too, had an abnormal childhood. Learning about someone’s political past is part of getting to know them. For as long as there are Apartheid survivors near me, I’m going to carry on looking for closure.

boontoe

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