Apparently Vice likes to focus on South Africa fairly often, so they got one of their South African reporters to interview his mom about what it was like to grow up in South Africa as a non-politically active white person.
VICE: What was it like to know that Apartheid existed while you were in South Africa?
Chryl Resnick: As soon as I was old enough to understand what was going on around me—which was pretty early on in my life—I knew that it was dead wrong. I couldn’t understand why it existed. It always seemed wrong to me. I couldn’t understand when I took Spanish dancing lessons with my friend Carmen, why I wasn’t allowed to be friends with her. She wasn’t allowed to come over to my house, because it was illegal. Black people couldn’t come over to white people’s houses. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to go to her house.Did you try to hang out with her when you could?
I think Carmen did come to my apartment a couple of times. The only time that non-white people could come into the white communities was to work in people’s homes or as domestic servants—they couldn’t come on a social basis.What was it like to enter the townships to visit Carmen?
I remember one morning we went there the night after Carmen’s brother had gotten the crap beaten out of him by the police—there had been a raid. I remember how uncomfortable I felt that he had to endure that at the hands of the white police.Was it uncomfortable because you felt guilty?
I felt like it was my fault. I’m white.Eventually, you discovered the police were following you, because you had visited a township. How did you find out?
A friend called my mother and told my mother that it might be better if we got out of the country, because the telephones were being tapped and we were being followed. I do recall one day walking on Sea Point Beach and feeling like I was being followed. I assumed I would have been arrested if I were caught. As a white person, it was illegal to go into townships.
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[Source : Vice]
