Apartheid's ‘othering’ is alive and well

MY FIRST conscious political awakening happened when I was 12 or 13 years old.

- ASHLEY GREEN-THOMPSON

Because there were no high schools for coloured people in my hometown of Vryheid in northern Natal, we all did the boarding school thing.

The nuns at Nardini Convent School convinced my folks that I should not follow my older siblings at Little Flower School in Ixopo — I guess Catholic nuns come in various guises and character. | ended up at Thomas More School outside Durban.

One Saturday, four of us went to see the first Rocky movie at a cinema in Pinetown, and while my three white compadres were allowed in, yours truly was first grilled on his origins and race, and then denied entry.

It was a mild taste of the othering that apartheid visited on people living in South Africa.

Apartheid was brutal in how it separated communities and families on the basis of their skin colour. It created classes of inclusion — the fairer the skin, the closer to privilege. White folk comfortably lived their best lives, even the working class. Indians and coloureds were ranked next in terms of access to resources, and we internalised the aspiration to whiteness that would ensure our preferential existence over black Africans, who had very few avenues to pursue social mobility.