Experiencing Apartheid as a 4 Year Old

I am a 55 year old person of so called “indian” descent, born and bred in South Africa. Apartheid was abolished when I was 28, so I had a good long period growing up under it.

My great grandfather came here in 1899 because the British were busy taxing subsistence farmers in Gujrat, who were then forced to send their children to cities to earn cash to pay for the right to live on the land of their birth. His parents mortgaged the land they had to send their eldest to South Africa to earn a living, following other people from their village. He came here as a mere 12 year old peasant child, with this huge responsibility of making things work for his parents. He hawked vegetables in Durban and then moved to Johannesburg. He failed a lot at business and it was not helped that he had land he finally managed to buy in Norwood in Johannesburg being taken away from him as a result of early British racist policies which sought to marginalise Indians in South Africa.

He went to Nelspruit just after the Anglo-Boer war and finally managed, in his 30s, to open a successful set of basic good shops. He managed also to send his eldest to study and my paternal grandfather became a lawyer. He led the family into the middle classes. My dad became a doctor, and moved to Durban where I was born and grew up.

We were privileged as a result, but we were second class citizens because our skin was the wrong colour for the Apartheid regime. Like all people of colour , we paid the same taxes as so called “whites”, but got much less than a 1/4 of the state services ‘whites” did, were forced to live in less managed areas with others of our “population group” — ie separate from “whites”, “blacks” and ‘coloureds”. “Blacks” were even worse of, they were given even less, and persecuted much more. So as middle class people, our family was relatively privileged.

I found out about Apartheid when I was 4.

My parents tried to emigrate to Canada when I was around 3 - we lived there for 9 months. I remember Canada as a lovely place where we had TV and I could watch cartoons — in South Africa, the Calvinist Apartheid state saw TV as the devils box and banned it. I also have memories of going all over the place — to parks and cultural spaces etc. Then they returned, as they missed their extended families too much. So we moved back to Westville and back in the old house which had not been sold at the time. It seemed not much changed — or so I thought.

I had no clue what Apartheid really was at this point — I was too small when we left to fully comprehend such a bizarre and dehumanising thing. But I leant quick shortly after returning.

Soon after arriving back, my beautiful mum, whom I adored, took me with her to the Post Office in Westville. For some reason she walked into the front of the Post Office which was, I remember, sparkly clean, had three counters and was empty. I remember her being rudely shouted at by a worker to get out — the first time I experienced public humiliation. She was told using the derogatory word “coolie” that she belonged in the back. The back area for all people of colour was badly lit, dirty and had one teller and a long queue. I remember feeling offended for my mum. I didn’t understand why she had been treated in this way.

At that moment I discovered what was called “petty apartheid”. This meant that people of color were not use the same spaces as “whites”. It was very much seperate and unequal. Benches, toilets, cinemas, beaches, parks and much more in the city, all had signs saying “Whites Only”. The few services of the same kind (Non-Whites Only) were in crowded areas, of limited offering and badly maintained. Its hard to imagine for someone not living in it, how this messes with you head, how angry it makes one.

I was around 21 when I attended mass protests that took place around the country which would finally end this part of Apartheid, but the mentality it developed amongst many “white” people never changed much in my experience (I’ll tell you more another time).

I wish no child to have this experience.

It took me longer to fully understand my middle class privilege (but thats also another story).

What the experience in the Post Office did do was make me very angry — and its a big reason why I ended up doing the work I do, working in the area of culture and social change. I wish I didn’t have to have experienced my sweet, kind and graceful mother treated in that way to discover my calling, but it worked well enough to make me recognise injustice and eventually become committed to non-racialism.

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