I have since been informed that petty apartheid covered the more ‘minor’ aspects of apartheid, such as the Immorality Act and those laws that restricted access by black people to ‘whites only’ beaches, parks etc.

While I was growing up, I never knew anything about apartheid, my first knowledge only came, really, when I was around 19 and my friend went to Rhodes and became a political activist. But this only impinged on the periphery of my life and I thought she was doing it to be different, or to make some kind of statement, and as she was there and I was still in our suburb, what she got up to, thought, believed or did had even less impact as time went on.

Of course I knew that black people were not allowed on beaches or in parks, but that, to me, was just normal life. I never noticed anything inconvenient, wrong, untoward or in any way questionable about the laws that were in place at the time. I merely presumed that was how it was. Actually I never even thought about the laws as being laws, if you know what I mean. I never thought about politics, or legislation or any of that kind of thing.

My parents never discussed the politics of our country, they never discussed who they voted for, and I assume it was the Nats but I do not really know. We were an a-political family, through and through.

Black people were treated kindly in our house but we were taught by our mother that they were not as clean as we were; therefore they had to be given different cups to drink from and plates to eat off. All this, to me, was perfectly normal.

I never questioned why black people were not allowed to live in our suburbs. I never knew they were not allowed to live in our suburbs to be perfectly honest. I just assumed they stayed where they wanted to stay.

When I went to a private school we had black people in our class (only two at that time, in 1981) and again I never asked myself why they had not been in our government schools, presuming that as Afrikaners went to Afrikaans schools, so blacks must go to black schools.

This was the way life was.

I remember saying some of this on a forum I belonged to some years back and having a huge fight with a black woman who said there was no way I could ever have been unaware of what was going on in our country; but of course there was a way, we all grow up with our own version of reality and this was mine.

I never asked myself whether black people were badly treated, whether black people in other countries were allowed to own homes in white suburbs, walk, sit and holiday where white people did. Where you do not see a problem, you also do not envisage any solutions or raise any questions.

I am not weighed down with any guilt about all this today, either. I am in no way responsible for the choices and decisions of my government or my parents.

“How old do you think I am?”

“Isn’t my baby beautiful?”

Is your epiglottis in danger of being swallowed?

Not mine.

I’m expected to answer questions like these all the time.

I get asked these questions because I’m a freak of nature – like one of those people who attract lightning bolts, and I’m forced to answer them.

I’m forced to answer them because I have no choice in the matter.

I have no choice in the matter because I cannot lie.

That’s right. There it is. It’s out there – I am incapable of lying.

And people supernaturally seem to know this.

My inability to deceive is not only evident in the obvious – like a whopping uncover-up story, an off-white lie, and a ‘no Oscar to the lady with the fake illness’ performance.

Even in silence the truth is broadcasted by my face.

Disclosing my number to demonstrate what happens when I attempt to hide behind a telephone would be privacy-suicide. Sorry.

Case study #9347945608456983456∞ shall have to suffice:

Answering “Absolutely,” after a guy at a wedding asked me, “Do you think I’m fat?”, it was later revealed to me that he was a psychiatric patient suffering from Body Dismorphic Disorder, and I had possibly set him back years in therapy.

Later, this same man asked me if I thought his ugly girlfriend was pretty.

I said nothing.

“I knew it!” he screamed.

“I said nothing!” [twice to one man in one night God!]

“You didn’t have to,” he pointed at my face, “You. Cannot. LIE!”

And so, if you have a shred of pity for me, read the following and, just this once, kindly bare before me the naked truth:

I am the product of an Apartheid-supporting family. I am also the product of a family so petty, a grandparent despised their grandchild into adulthood for observing a rotten front tooth while perched upon his knee.

Hence, I do not want to find a microfibre of pettiness entwined anywhere in the fabric of my being.

Is it?

I understand the irrationality of petty Apartheid.

The thought of “Whites Only” insignia offends my cerebral cortex.

However, on instinct I act as if they didn’t.

I’d like to see a mental Pass Book every time I wonder when they’re going to stop allowing illegal immigrants across the border, and give us whitey’s a chance to make up numbers.

I baulk at the sight of Heidi Klum and Seal kissing.

A black man may take the front seat in a taxi – I’d rather be left standing next to my broken down vehicle in quicksand than climb on board.

And I’ll gladly step off the pavement if he’s walking toward me – even quicker if he’s approaching from behind with speed!

I shall not attend any black club, restaurant, shop or church. The very thought makes me contort in my chair in such a way I may need a chiropractor – a white one.

I find a white waiter serving black customers unfitting, a white woman holding a black baby biologically immoral, a white beggar unjustifiable [and always give him more money], and many more of these consciously illogical black-man-invading-white-world situations abhorrent.

And that’s the brutal truth.

Now it’s your turn.

Do these ingrained reactions toward a history of petty Apartheid make me a petty person?

However, back on topic – As I grew older and more cognitive, my naïve sense of the world caused me to not notice the fact that blacks and coloureds weren’t allowed at the same restaurants, shopping malls and parks that I went to. It was only later on in life that I realised things were very different. By that time, 1994 was just around the corner. It took this event to unfold to cause my metamorphosis to unfold. I emerged from my cocoon and soon realised the world really wasn’t such a nice place. It was anything but.

I still remember my early years of high school – Post 94 – The racial divides still in force even with the newly elected ANC in power. The black students would all socialise on the one side of the field and the white students would gather on the other side of the field. We didn’t mix. I didn’t know why really but it seems people just found it impossible to mingle. We were very different I was told but I didn’t understand why. They seemed to be just like me. In fact from an early age my parents had told me all people were to be treated equal. I just didn’t understand. What was going on? The signs I had heard of marking certain areas “WHITES ONLY” were long gone yet the feeling behind what those signs meant was still very much in play.

We might have all finally been allowed to be together yet at the early stages of this unison it was anything but harmonious. It was as though we were the oil and water. Trying to get us to mix wasn’t an easy task.

It was only towards the end of my schooling year and my progression into the working world that things seemed to make more sense. I began to notice that people were closing the gap and forming friendships across racial lines. Things for what I could see didn’t seem as awkward as it use to be. My original sentiments passed down to me by my parents, turned out to be factual. We were different at all. We were the same. It wasn’t petty apartheid anymore… It was just petty!
Petty to see colour in a country as colourful as the rainbow.