← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Eendracht Maakt Mag
Thread ID: 8318 | Posts: 13 | Started: 2003-07-21
2003-07-21 10:38 | User Profile
Could someone with a good knowledge of genetics explain to me how something like this happens?
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
[img]http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/01/02/millennium/12-laing3.jpg[/img] [color=red]AGE OF INNOCENCE: Sandra in 1968
[img]http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/01/02/millennium/12-laing1.jpg[/img] her father, Abraham Laing, in 1967
[img]http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/01/02/millennium/12-laing5.jpg[/img] her mother, Sannie Laing, with Sandra at the age of 11[/color]
[url=http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/01/02/millennium/mil03.htm]http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/01/02/mille...nnium/mil03.htm[/url]
2003-07-21 13:39 | User Profile
I believe the technical term geneticists use is cuckoldery.
The tests for parentage were done in the mid 60s. DNA comparision wasn't available until the early '90s. We can only speculate what was tested. A more sophisticated blood-type analysis, perhaps? Whatever the tests were, they didn't have a very good accuracy rate.
2003-07-21 13:52 | User Profile
Originally posted by Oklahomaman@Jul 21 2003, 07:39 * ** I believe the technical term geneticists use is cuckoldery*.
The tests for parentage were done in the mid 60s. DNA comparision wasn't available until the early '90s. We can only speculate what was tested. A more sophisticated blood-type analysis, perhaps? Whatever the tests were, they didn't have a very good accuracy rate. **
So you don't think some kind of "genetic atavist" effect could have happened in this case? True, genetic testing probably wasn't very sophisticated in the 60s, but the Afrikaners, especially those living in the Cape have absorbed a certain quantity of Capoid blood.
2003-07-21 13:59 | User Profile
I occasionally observe something simmilar in Finnish and Russian families; some siblings look pure Europid white others look like they have Uralic admixture. I've yet to see Finns or Russians that look nearly as Uralic as this girl looks Negroid, though.
2003-07-21 14:08 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Prodigal Son@Jul 21 2003, 08:52 * ** So you don't think some kind of "genetic atavist" effect could have happened in this case? **
C'mon, PS. It's more than obvious. That girl don't look a bit like her Daddy, and girls usually do. The fact that she is dark means her momma done slept with Steve Biko or some other black South African.
Now in places like the Dominican Republic, I have seen very dark skin children born of relatively light brown skinned parents. The parents aren't what I would call white, though.
2003-07-21 14:13 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Jul 21 2003, 08:08 * ** C'mon, PS.ÃÂ It's more than obvious.ÃÂ That girl don't look a bit like her Daddy, and girls usually do.ÃÂ The fact that she is dark means her momma done slept with Steve Biko or some other black South African.
Now in places like the Dominican Republic, I have seen very dark skin children born of relatively light brown skinned parents.ÃÂ ÃÂ The parents aren't what I would call white, though.**
Well, I was just wondering whether something like this was even possible; perhaps AntiYuppie can elighten us later.
2003-07-21 17:50 | User Profile
The title of this thread should more accurately be, a black girl with one white parent. Evidently somebody was fooling around... Modern DNA tests would be very enlightening.
2003-07-21 18:53 | User Profile
That woman's husband must be pretty thick. I'd be pissed as hell if I were him.
This article is fishy. Smells like propaganda.
2003-07-21 19:05 | User Profile
This article is fishy. Smells like propaganda.
Yes, Edana. It is fishy. Gefilte fishy. <_<
"See? Race [u]doesn't[/u] exist! Two so-called 'White' people can have a so-called 'Black' child! See, see! We told you so!"
2003-07-22 01:43 | User Profile
This might be helpful...
[url=http://www.white-history.com/mendel.htm]My Webpage[/url]
2003-07-22 11:59 | User Profile
Originally posted by Edana@Jul 21 2003, 12:53 * *That woman's husband must be pretty thick.ÃÂ I'd be pissed as hell if I were him.ÃÂ **
Well, they did administer a blood test. I guess the whole issue can be reduced to the accuracy of paternity testing in the 1960s.
** This article is fishy.ÃÂ Smells like propaganda.**
The article is indeed propaganda (what else would you expect from a liberal South African newspaper?), but I am interested in the actual incident rather than the numerous articles dealing with it.
2003-07-22 12:05 | User Profile
*Originally posted by EDUMAKATEDMOFO@Jul 21 2003, 19:43 * ** This might be helpful...
[url=http://www.white-history.com/mendel.htm]My Webpage[/url] **
Thanks, EDUMAKATED! Very nicely done site, BTW. Are you a geneticist or a biologist like AY?
2003-07-22 13:49 | User Profile
Sorry to mislead... that's not my webpage... it's a link to white-history.com. My apologies.