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"Ten-year-old Sandra Laing slipped unnoticed into the school cloakroom. She made sure she was alone, then picked up a can of white scouring powder and hastily sprinkled her face, arms and hands. Remembering the teasing she had just endured in the schoolyard during recess, she began scrubbing vigorously, trying to wash off the natural brown color of her skin." (Ebony 1968, 85) |
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legal classification, that had aroused the bigotry of white parents two years before. And they still didn't want their children in school with a dark child. No matter what the statute books ruled, Sandra was still a kaffir
32 to them" (1968, 88).33 The informal categories of racism and the formal classification system meet once again, this time tearing Sandra Laing's biography apart. Sandra's parents, clinging to the formal definition of her race, refused to tell her exactly what was going on or why she was so treated. For two years she "acted out fantasy rather than face the bitter truth. Until recently, she dutifully got up in time for school every morning since her dismissal in March of 1966, dressed herself in her school uniform, then sat around the house and waited, trying not to believe what was happening to her" (Ebony June 1968, 86). |
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In 1983 the Rand Daily Mail reported that Sandra had become completely alienated from her family and community. She "eventually lived with a black man and, ironically, applied to be reclassified so she could live legally with her lover" (see figure 6.4 Rand Daily Mail 7/23/83, 10). |
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Christopher Hope's novel, A Separate Development, centers on a dark-skinned boy who grew up white and who suddenly, upon reaching adolescence, becomes defined as coloured. A bus conductor throws him off a white bus, calling him a "white kaffir." The boy says bitterly: |
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The thing is that this entire country has always based itself on two propositions, to wit: that the people in South Africa are divided into separate groups according to their racial characteristics and that all groups are at war with each other. Before you're clear about your groups, you must be sure you're clear about your individuals. As they teach the kids to chant: 'An impure group is a powerless group!' . . . Preserve the bloodlines. That was the rallying cry for generations. May your skin-tones match the great colour chart in the sky. Anyone who broke the bloodlines, who wasn't on the chart, was a danger to the regular order of things. You fought such renegades, mutants, throw-backs |
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