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Brownbeauty123
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 318
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 16, 2006 - 12:21 pm: | 
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02 January 2000
2000
Sandra Laing, survivor
'I was not happy at school - the other children said I was not white and why was I attending their school? This happened all the time, inside and outside the classroom and in the hostel. I had no friends. The teachers knew about the teasing and taunting but did nothing to stop it'
Born to white parents, Sandra Laing was 10 in 1966 when she was expelled from school and reclassified coloured for having dark skin and curly hair. Her shattered life remains emblematic of the clinical horror of apartheid bureaucracy. She tells her story:
I AM Sandra Laing. I was born in November 1955 in Piet Retief. My parents are white. I have two brothers. They are also white. I attended the Deborah Retief boarding school from the age of five. In 1966, when I was 10, the police came to take me away from the school.
Mr Van Tonder, the principal, said I was not white and could not stay. I was taken to the hostel and told to pack my things. Two policemen drove me to my father's shop in Panbult. They said I was being expelled because I looked different. I had darker skin and curly hair. My father cried. I stayed at home for two years.
'Apartheid has ended, and I'd like to shake Mr Mandela's hand for that, but it is too late for me'
My family spoke Afrikaans and we attended the Dutch Reformed Church. My mother, Sannie, is one of three daughters from the Roux family. My father was Abraham Laing, a very strict man who always led the prayers at family meal times. My father and mother ran the family businesses in Panbult and Brereton Park respectively; they were busy and I was taken care of by a nanny. I think her name was Rosie. All my friends were black and they were mainly the children of the people who worked for us.
I was not happy at school - the other children said I was not white and why was I attending their school? This happened all the time, inside and outside the classroom and in the hostel. I had no friends. The teachers knew about the teasing and taunting but did nothing to stop it. I went to complain to Mr Van Tonder, but he just laughed and told me to stay out of their way. I had no choice but to fight back. I sometimes hit some of them.
It took the parents and the school body three years to have me expelled, because first I had to be reclassified coloured. I was confused and asked many questions. My mother said "things will come right", and my father appealed against my reclassification as a coloured, but he was unsuccessful. I understand that nine schools rejected my application to enrol, so I continued my schooling by correspondence for the next two years.
In 1967, the race classification law was changed to say that the children of two white parents cannot be reclassified into another group, but before I could be reclassified white there had to be proof I was the biological child of my two white parents. They took blood from my right arm and my parents had to be tested too. The tests confirmed that I was indeed the child of both my white parents, so I was reclassified white. The Education Department then ruled that I could return to the Deborah Retief primary school but recommended that in my own interests I should not be re-admitted to the hostel.
Being reclassified white did not stop the manager of the Ermelo café from refusing to serve me the food my father and I had ordered. No blacks ate at his restaurant, he said. My father said I was his daughter before he got up and left, feeling very angry.
After two years of correspondence school I enrolled at a convent in Newcastle. The nuns were good to me and I made two friends - one from Standerton and another from Zambia. During the school holidays I helped my mother and father in their shops. I sometimes went to church but I was not comfortable. It seemed like the other churchgoers did not want me among them. I heard and felt some remarks that were aimed at me. I went to church less frequently but continued to read the Bible in search of the answers I did not find. I thought there was some fault that I looked different, but couldn't find an explanation. I had darker skin and curlier hair than I was supposed to have. My mother always asked me to stay out of the sun as it made me even darker. I felt a lot of pain and thought it would be best if I left and stayed with people I felt happier with. After my Standard 7 vacation I did not return to school and left home with Petrus Zwane. I met him when he started selling vegetables at our shop, and became friendly with him. He was Zulu-speaking. I was 16.
I was welcomed into the Zwane family. They live near Carolina and we stayed with them while Petrus built us a home in Kromkrans, near Hendrina. Our first child, Henry, was born there. We had a small shop and owned a Volkswagen. I went to show my son to my mother. Henry is my parents' first grandchild. After my second child was born, my mother gave me a box of baby clothes and asked me not to return. She was happy to see me, but my father did not want to know anything about me. She asked me to write or telephone but not to visit. That was in 1973.
That same year I turned 18 and applied for an identity document. The officials said I was white, but if they were to give me the white identity document they would have to take my two children away from me because they were not white. I could apply for a coloured ID, but that required the consent of my father, and he refused. I had to wait until I was 21, they said, and then I did not need anyone's consent.
In 1976, when there were uprisings against apartheid and the education system, I turned 21 and I thought things would change. I applied for an identity document then, but it took six years before I finally got my first ID as a coloured. Until then I could not prove who I was or find work or open an account or do whatever a person has to do. Through those years I longed for my family, just to hear from them. I wrote several letters but they remained unanswered.
In 1989 I went to visit my cousin in Amsterdam. She told me my father had passed away the previous year and she gave me my mother's contact details. After that my mother wrote to me and sent me some money which she said I had inherited from my father. I have read the letter many times, as she wrote, "Ek skryf sonder adres " (I write without an address). The next year Nelson Mandela was released. But since then no one in my family has attempted to contact me. I don't know where they are. Apartheid has ended, and I would like to shake Mr Mandela's hand for that, but it is too late for me.
(As told to Amina Frense, a friend and broadcast journalist)
Laing lives in Tsakane, on the East Rand. She has two married children from her relationship with Zwane and three sons by her second husband, Johannes Motloung. She is still trying to trace her mother and brothers
Click below to see pictures
http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/01/02/millennium/mil03.htm
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Kenology
Regular Poster
Username: Kenology
Post Number: 43
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 17, 2006 - 12:45 pm: |
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I can't bring myself to read the article if it's really sayin' what I think it's sayin'.
And if it is, it's totally bullshit!
Impossible for a white couple to birth a colored child. |
Urban_scribe
Newbie Poster
Username: Urban_scribe
Post Number: 8
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 17, 2006 - 09:56 pm: |
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I read about this case some time ago. Ms. Laing is believed to have a rare disease called Nelson's Syndrome, which is a pituitary disorder/tumor that results in not only hyperpigmentation but also changes hair texture--making it more coarse/kinky. Apparently DNA tests proved that her White parents were indeed her biological parents. But being from South Africa in the days of apartheid, she was separated from her parents by the SA government and forced to live as a 'Colored'. Her life story is slated to be made into a film. I guess Nelson's Syndrome is the opposite of Albinism.
~us |
Roxie
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Roxie
Post Number: 842
Registered: 06-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 19, 2006 - 07:11 pm: |
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Or Both parents could've had ressesive dark skin/kinky hair genes. |
Kenology
Regular Poster
Username: Kenology
Post Number: 44
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 19, 2006 - 08:48 pm: |
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Dark skin is not recessive.
And I still think that's all a hoax. |
Savant
Newbie Poster
Username: Savant
Post Number: 15
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 20, 2006 - 08:17 pm: |
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sounds totally implausible to me---definitely a hoax.
and as far as dna tests are concerned---yeah, right.
as if dna tests taken under an apartheid regime in south africa are going to disclose the real deal. *eyeroll*
i'm sure some "hush-money" was exchanged so that all incriminating evidence was dispensed with. |
Clymenestra
First Time Poster
Username: Clymenestra
Post Number: 1
Registered: 06-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 21, 2006 - 09:24 pm: |
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Is there really any "pure" race out there anymore? The human race is pretty nomadic. There is a good chance that there is a recessive gene in this family. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 247
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 22, 2006 - 12:58 am: |
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"And I still think that's all a hoax.
Wrong! It's not a hoax. This story is real. I remember reading about it more than thirty years ago (she was a child then). There was a complete story about it in Ebony magazine. Apartheid was still very much the law of the land back then and I remember how that girl suffered at the hands of the inhumane and cruel laws of Apartheid. Balthazar Johannes Vorster was the prime minister of South Africa at the time. He was a hard line racist who gained notoriety by opposing South Africa’s intervention on the side of the Allies during WWII. He openly supported the Hitler and Germanys fanatical racist beliefs.
This story of Sandra Laing was widely discussed and debated. As I said, I remember it very well.
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