Comrade Editor: On life, journalism and the birth of Namibia

By Gwen Lister

Comrade Editor is the story of Gwen Lister, the activist journalist who achieved global renown for opposing South Africa’s occupation of Namibia. Lister cut her journalistic teeth with Hannes Smith at the Windhoek Advertiser. Together they started the Windhoek Observer. When increased pressure from the white establishment forced her out, she founded The Namibian in 1985.  

A brave and honest account of the personal and professional journey of one of Africa’s foremost journalists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: May 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9780624092575

Gwen Lister

Gwen Lister was born in South Africa. She was a journalist for the Windhoek Advertiser and the Windhoek Observer in Namibia. She also started an independent paper, The Namibian.  Lister has two children and lives in Namibia. She mentors journalists and staff of Namibian publications and still speaks on issues of democracy and press freedom.

Book preview

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens

can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

Acronyms and abbreviations

AG Administrator General

ANC African National Congress

APAI African Platform on Access to Information

AU African Union

AWB Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging

BWS Breaking the Wall of Silence

CANU Caprivi African National Union

CCB Civil Cooperation Bureau

CCN Council of Churches in Namibia

CoD Congress of Democrats

DTA Democratic Turnhalle Alliance

EFN Editors Forum of Namibia

Fapla Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola

FNLA Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola

HNP Herstigte Nasionale Party

ICJ International Court of Justice

IPI International Press Institute

LAC Legal Assistance Centre

MISA Media Institute of Southern Africa

MK Umkhonto weSizwe

MPC Multi Party Conference

MPLA Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola

Nampa Namibia Press Agency

NBC Namibia Broadcasting Corporation

NDF Namibia Defence Force

NMT Namibia Media Trust

NNF Namibia National Front

NP National Party

NSHR National Society for Human Rights

Nudo National Unity Democratic Organisation

NUNW National Union of Namibian Workers

NWICO New World Communication and Information Order

OPC Ovamboland People’s Congress

OPO Ovamboland People’s Organisation

PAC Pan Africanist Congress

PLAN Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia

RAU Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit

RDP Rally for Democracy and Progress

SAA South African Airways

SAAF South African Air Force

SADC Southern African Development Community

SADF South African Defence Force

SPYL Swapo Party Youth League

SWA South West Africa

Swanla South West African Native Labour Association

Swapo South West Africa People’s Organisation

Swapo-D Swapo Democrats

SWAPOL South West Africa Police

SWATF South West Africa Territorial Force

TGNU Transitional Government of National Unity

TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission

UCT University of Cape Town

Unam University of Namibia

UNESCO UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNITA União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola

UNTAG United Nations Transition Assistance Group

PART 1

ACTIVIST IN THE MAKING

Chapter 1

Memories in sepia

‘Smile,’ my mother told me, and my five-year-old self did so reluctantly.

IT’S A STILL and oppressive evening. Clouds are building, as they do for days before it rains, but there’s no relief yet from the heat of the Namibian summer. However, it cushions me in an appealing warmth. I squat down in front of a trunk filled with memorabilia. Wryly, I realise that I’ve begun to lose the suppleness of youth.

Tracking back over decades to discover how and why my activism and journalism roots were nurtured, I sift through childhood keepsakes, and come upon an old black-and-white studio photograph. Discoloured with age, it shows a shy and diffident girl of about five, with neatly cut hair and bangs, chin tucked into chest, eyes wide open, but seemingly focused on an inner world. How did she become me, I wonder, marvelling at my sudden memory of the red-collared dress, home-sewn, with neatly embroidered white flowers. I can picture my mother off camera, saying ‘Smile, Gwen.’ ‘Why?’ I must have asked, as I was clearly reluctant. One of the many questions I asked as a child, a precursor perhaps to a life in journalism.

At that time, we were living in East London, the town where I was born in December 1953. But we did not stay there for long. My father worked for Barclays Bank, and was transferred regularly, so I have scattered memories of a childhood spent in many different places in South Africa. Later, after I had left home, my parents also spent several years in what was then known as South West Africa. When my brother and I heard the dreaded word ‘transfer’, we knew we’d soon be off to somewhere else. We would put down tentative roots, shake off our reserve and make new friends, only to find ourselves back on the road to different surroundings, strange schools and unfamiliar houses that never quite became home.

Both my parents were born and raised in the Eastern Cape. My father, an only child, had received an elite education at St Andrews College in Grahamstown. A good-looking man, with a neatly trimmed moustache, he had inherited my grandmother’s charm, and was well-liked by just about everyone.

Dark-haired and vivacious, my mother, Joan, was only twenty when she gave birth to me, and my father just four years older. Her early working career as a secretary was cut short when she met my father and had me soon after, and she became a stay-at-home mom. Life must have seemed relatively simple, and full of promise. Over time, however, my father developed a weakness for alcohol – a constant feature, and hazard, of a career in banking at that time – that increasingly affected their relationship. This, in turn, would leave its imprint on my life as well as those of my siblings – John, two years younger than me, and Gillian, who was born nearly a decade and a half later.

At that time, my paternal grandparents – John Clifford and Alice Maude Lister – also lived in East London. Born and raised in Yorkshire, they had moved to South Africa shortly after World War One, settling in the Eastern Cape, where my grandfather entered the local wool trade. In fact, my grandmother was the person I was closest to for the best part of my youth. An avid reader, constantly surrounded by books and English magazines like Country Life and The Tatler, she was accomplished and efficient, skilled at cooking, needlework and bridge. ‘Genteel’ is a good way to describe her. In my young eyes, her East London garden was a floral wonderland filled with sweet scents and secret nooks and crannies. I’d follow in her wake, asking questions as she moved among the hydrangeas, her gloved hands making flowers grow and bloom as if by magic.

When my grandfather retired, they moved to a flat in Rondebosch, in Cape Town’s southern suburbs. I lived with them for a while in my early teens, when my parents were transferred in the middle of a school year, and when I studied at the University of Cape Town. My grandmother remained calm when others fell apart. Not physically demonstrative – a trait we had in common – I nevertheless knew she cared deeply about me. Always gracious, I don’t believe I ever heard her raise her voice in anger, although my grandfather irked her frequently, especially with his pipe-smoking habit which she detested. A corpulent and jovial Yorkshireman with a wicked sense of humour, he would fall asleep in his armchair with the pipe hanging from his mouth. The ash would scatter as he dozed, burning tiny holes into his shirt and pants, which he did his best to hide from her. When it happened, he’d wink at me, telling me he’d ink in the marks. ‘John,’ Gran would remonstrate as she picked over his clothing, ‘you’ve fallen asleep with your pipe again. Dreadful habit.’

Grandpa talked to me for hours about the ‘Listers of Manningham’, and urged me to write about our family roots. But I did not share his nostalgia for what he still regarded as ‘home’. My heart was in a different place, and my story would be written on another continent. He further piqued my interest when he told me he had been a despatch rider in North Africa in World War One. But he was reluctant to talk about the war years, and so I learnt little more.

Gran’s bridge afternoons were famous. I can still hear murmurs of ‘three no trumps’ as I stealthily sampled some of the delicacies my grandmother had prepared for afternoon tea. These would include triangular cucumber sandwiches, with crusts removed, and tea served in fragile porcelain cups which were infernally difficult to hold. To her chagrin, I preferred a sturdy mug for what would remain my favourite beverage. The clink of teaspoons on china and the soft voices of elegant women with blue-rinsed hair provided a tranquil background to my afternoons spent studying in an adjacent bedroom, furtively smoking the occasional cigarette on the balcony. Gran was the quintessential liberal, and fitted in perfectly with my romantic view of the world. In her universe, people treated one another with courtesy, expressed informed and educated opinions, and never said anything harsh or prejudicial about others.

I never developed the same bonds with my maternal grandparents, perhaps because our lives didn’t intersect quite as much, although they also lived in the Eastern Cape. Grandpa James Zeller – a civil servant – was a rather stern man, but my gran, Margaret, was quite the opposite. A tiny shrimp of a woman, she obsessed about her weight until she died in her nineties.

While time spent with Gran and Grandpa Lister was an exercise in gentility, life with my parents and siblings was something else. I’ve always disliked confrontation, at least on a personal level, and tensions at home in my adult years often upset me more than the daunting challenges I faced in the course of my work. Given this, some would say it’s ironic that I chose to confront the abuse of power as well as injustice, which landed me in drama and controversy for most of my adult years, and subjected me to a mega dose of precisely the kind of conflict I claimed to abhor.

I was bold, but also insecure, with nails bitten to the quick. It took a conscious effort to overcome my feelings of self-doubt. Decades later, while others routinely saw me as self-confident and even fearless, I was still beset by diffidence and apprehension, shrinking in the face of the compliments that occasionally came my way. Habitually putting the needs of others before my own occasionally led to my being accused of playing the martyr. This was never my intention, although I always felt happier when others were too. I cared so deeply about what goes on in the world around me that it was hard to share myself emotionally on a person-to-person basis.

I’ve never liked excess of any kind, so I eat sparingly. Even as a child, I believed that many people were going hungry because others consumed too much. I still detest nothing more than Namibia’s ‘kilimanjaros’, plates piled with food that relatively affluent people attending events take home with them if they can. Cruelty of any kind, also to animals, is another of my pet hates. Over the years, I’ve intervened in abusive situations more times than I can remember. Perhaps as a result of a not overly affectionate upbringing, or the constant moves from place to place, I seldom felt really close to others, although at times I yearned for it. But being emotionally distant cushioned me from hurt.

At age six, after a spell in Queenstown, we moved to Elliot in the Transkei. Our house was small and basic. The ceiling leaked like a sieve, and when it rained, water would drip through the ceiling into buckets and pots my mother had placed in all the rooms. There was no indoor toilet, and going at night was a terrifying experience. I’d stifle the urge for as long as possible, but would eventually be compelled to walk the pitch-black pathway through the grass to the long-drop at the end of the garden, which seemed an eternity away. The ‘bogeyman’, if not under my bed, was surely out there. But I’d have to face my fears and use it, perched above what seemed to be a bottomless hole.

My father’s earnings were meagre. As a lowly bank clerk, his finances allowed him to play a game of golf only once a week. There was just enough money left over at month-end for my parents to treat themselves to the cinema. I remember developing a taste for samp and beans, popular fare among the Xhosa-speaking people. I could also sing the Xhosa ‘click song’ by heart, and I still have the words ‘Igqira lendlela nguqo ngquthwane’ imprinted in my memory.

Chapter 2

Waking up to apartheid

Front page of Rand Daily Mail, 22 March 1960, when Sharpeville became an apartheid flashpoint.

IN LATE MARCH 1960, and already inquisitive, I heard my parents talk in hushed tones about events at Sharpeville township in the Vaal Triangle south of Johannesburg. Scores of black people protesting against the notorious ‘pass laws’ – aimed at controlling the movements of black people, especially in the ‘white’ areas – had been shot dead by police, and many more wounded.

My father was scathing about the ‘winds of change’ speech by Harold Macmillan, then British prime minister, in the South African parliament a few weeks before the shooting. At that time, South Africa was still a self-governing dominion of the British Empire, and a member of the Commonwealth. In his eponymous address, Macmillan said a ‘wind of change’ was blowing through Africa which the United Kingdom would no longer try to resist. Britain would decolonise, and could no longer support South Africa if it persisted with apartheid. Instead of heeding this gentle admonition, the National Party (NP) government responded to the Sharpeville massacre by banning the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC).

In October, the government held a referendum on whether South Africa should become a republic. My parents were opposed to the idea, and voted against it. They told me the NP had hauled dirt-poor Afrikaners out of the mountains to boost the vote against the Union. But the referendum was narrowly won, and on 31 May 1961 South Africa became a republic, withdrawing from the Commonwealth shortly thereafter.

Like many English-speakers back then, my parents were ‘decent’ people, but also conflicted about South Africa and its future. They weren’t keen on Afrikaner domination and were critical of apartheid, but couldn’t bring themselves to disparage it too severely or too openly for fear of being regarded as ‘disloyal’. Today, we have lost much of our memory of the animosity between the ‘white tribes’ – English- and Afrikaans-speakers – at that time. Many Afrikaners had never forgotten the Anglo-Boer War, when their republics were defeated by the British, and many Afrikaner women and children died in the concentration camps. Both my parents had been born in South Africa, but because we spoke English, we were as disliked as the British themselves.

So I soon realised there was no love lost between English- and Afrikaans-speakers. We had a choice assortment of insults for one another. My parents had forbidden us from using the ‘k’ word for black people, and yet we could and did, often with relish, call Afrikaners ‘Dutchmen’, which they hated; ‘wing nuts’ and ‘blikore’ (tin ears – both references to protruding ears); as well as ‘rock spiders’. In turn, they called us ‘rooinekke’ (rednecks), derived from the sunburnt necks of British soldiers whose pith helmets had failed to protect them while lying in trenches in the early stages of the Anglo-Boer War.

‘There’s nothing wrong with black people,’ my parents would say, ‘we’re just different.’ But Afrikaners were a slightly lower species, intent on the subjugation of English-speakers, in business and in social life, and we were brought up to dislike them. In later years, when I began working as a reporter and became a target of the apartheid authorities, my anti-Afrikaner feelings intensified.

I irritated my parents, often deliberately, by probing, prodding, and even taunting them on issues from apartheid to homosexuality, and whether they’d mind if I married a black man one day. ‘Don’t be silly, Gwen,’ they would say, trying in vain to brush my persistent and often argumentative queries aside. Meanwhile, the moves from town to town continued, and, although my parents were Anglicans, my mother believed in convent education, so I attended them for most of my school life. They scrimped and saved to ensure that my siblings and I received ‘good’ private schooling.

In Port Elizabeth, in my early teens, I underwent something of a political awakening. I’d become aware of the stark inequalities between black and white people, a conscience born with the help of progressive-minded nuns. Like most girls, I was self-conscious; legs too skinny, ears and nose too big. But I began to take an interest in the world and my place in it. I listened to the radio, and began to read newspapers. Martin Luther King Junior’s ‘I have a dream’ speech affected me deeply, although I can’t recall where I first heard or read about it – perhaps in the Pathé newsreels which used to precede the main movie at the local cinema. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the opposition to the Vietnam War, and the advent of the ‘peace movement’ helped to consolidate my opposition to apartheid, especially as I became more aware of its consequences. ‘Make love, not war’ seemed like a good idea.

I discovered the joys of reading, mostly my mother’s library books, as I’d long since graduated from youthful literature. As ‘lights out’ was strictly at nine, I resorted to reading in the dim glow of a streetlight outside, often into the early morning hours. I had to read quickly, and return the books surreptitiously to the shelf next to my mother’s bed. She didn’t feel adult books were ‘suitable’ for a girl in her early teens.

So I developed a love of words, and kept a dictionary next to my bed, especially for deciphering the adult library books. Later, I would advise young reporters with home languages other than English to do the same. I became something of a nocturnal creature, enjoying the peace and tranquillity that came when everyone else was asleep and I’d feel safe in the illusion that the world was a better place than it actually was. I’ve burnt the midnight oil ever since.

When it dawned on me that I would need to be more confident if I were to oppose discrimination and inequality, I became more assertive, and sometimes defiant. I eventually developed enough courage to take part in school debates and other forms of public speaking, and soon discovered I was in my element, argumentative and self-assured enough to take others on. And nothing provoked me into greater vocal passion than to take on injustice of any kind.

On the home front, my father’s drinking worsened. In those days, this was an integral part of the ‘banking lifestyle’, and when we asked, ‘where’s dad?’, my mother often said he was ‘entertaining clients’. More often than not, this was an excuse for a night on the town. At the weekends, it was the ‘nineteenth hole’ at the golf club that kept him out until all hours. At our next stop, the town of George in the southern Cape, our home life deteriorated further. My parents argued more frequently and vehemently, followed by long silences which affected me more deeply than the disagreements themselves. The more my father drank, the angrier my mother became, with my brother and I bearing the brunt.

Today, I can’t fault her for that. It’s no joke to live with someone with a drinking problem. I’ve done it myself, and am all too familiar with its challenges and complexities. But I did blame her for not leaving my father and starting a new life, and told her so from a fairly young age. I resolved never to become as dependent on a partner, and I have kept my promise, if rather belatedly at times, leaving relationships when they go bad. I remember my mother hauling us out of bed, bundling us into the car in our pyjamas, and driving to the golf club to summon my father home. I hated that – even more, the pitying looks of other adults in the bar as we were sent in to call my dad, who would promise us he was on his way, but seldom was.

Of course, my childhood wasn’t all gloom and doom, and I also have many happy memories. But a pattern had begun to develop that would not change as long as my father remained alive, and would affect me in the longer term as well. In later years, partners would accuse me of paranoia when I became nervous and ready to leave social events when the alcohol started to flow.

For most of my school life, I’d been an average to decent student. I would work at the subjects I liked, including English and History, but hated arithmetic, let alone Maths. Years later, when my own daughter, who had an aptitude for numbers – or so the psychologist said – started failing this subject, I tried to insist she was a natural. ‘Why do I need Maths when I can use a calculator?’ asked Liberty, a strong-minded young girl, and I couldn’t bring myself to argue the point. At the Holy Cross Convent in George, I was unpopular with the nun who taught the subject. I never knew my times tables, and when I failed to recite them by rote, she’d rap me over the knuckles with a steel-edged wooden ruler, an excruciatingly painful form of punishment.

I developed a love of music, and it inspired me then and sustained me spiritually in later life. I have my mother to thank for this. When she was happy, which happened less as my father drank more, I would sing along with her to songs on the radio or her long-playing records. Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Etta James – I loved them all, and still know many of the lyrics off by heart.

Besides offering an escape, music was also a strong influence. In my teens, I went through a ‘dark’ phase, with Leonard Cohen’s ‘Songs from a Room’ keeping me riveted for hours on end. ‘Why do you listen to that depressing stuff?’ my mother would ask, demanding I turn it down as I sat in front of the stereo, deep in the doldrums. I’d mumble that it was partly due to her, while hoping she wouldn’t hear me. I would get a backhander if she did. Music made me feel liberated, and transported me to another world where I believed anything and everything was possible, including my own dreams. To be a sultry jazz singer in a smoky club was another of my childhood fantasies.

When I was thirteen, my mother, then in her mid-thirties, announced that she was pregnant. My brother and I were horrified. We were living in a Cape Dutch-style house in George, with a veranda that ran the length of the house beneath the upper floor windows. He and I decided to investigate what our parents got up to when the lights were out, which resulted in things like babies. So we stayed awake until late, crept along the zinc roof, and peered in their bedroom window.

What a disappointment it was to see my mother reading a book, and my father snoring into his pillow. ‘They’ve probably finished already. We were just too late to see it happen,’ I assured my brother, adding that we should try again another night. But he lost interest, and so we didn’t repeat the exercise. Months later, when my mother brought home a squalling, red-faced infant said to be our sister Gillian, we were even less impressed. Years after, we were mortified when our mother told us that she had noticed us outside the window, but pretended not to hear or see us.

George was a beautiful but very conservative place to live in. It was far smaller than it is today – we could walk through it with other English-speaking children from one end to another, taunting the Afrikaner kids, especially those on their way to Nagmaal – the communion service held four times a year at the local Dutch Reformed Church. From an early age I found peace and serenity in nature, a fascination that had probably begun in my grandmother’s garden, and later developed into a love of Namibia’s wide-open spaces. In George I spent many happy hours in the foothills of the Outeniqua Mountains, paddling in the clear streams which meandered through bracken, heather and moss, and inhaling the intoxicating aroma of unspoilt nature.

At weekends, my parents would take us to the beach. Victoria Bay wasn’t far, and idyllic, unless it was December when the ‘Vaalies’ would come down from the Transvaal with their caravans and mess the place up. In the off-season it was usually deserted and unspoilt, the only sounds the cacophony of ‘Christmas beetles’. I tried to conquer my fears by swimming out to where the waters got darker and colder, but would begin to wonder about what lay in wait, and would quickly swim back to shore. I was always afraid of deep water. This was overcome only once when, many years later, I threw myself into the blue depths at Lembogan in Bali to swim with manta rays.

We’d also go to places close to George, like Wilderness, which was not yet overpopulated. There were only a few holiday houses, shuttered up during the winter, and little else. Together with other children, we would brave the currents, standing on the steep banks of the lagoon as the tide came in, shrieking when we slid down into the foaming water as the waves carved out the sandy shoreline from beneath our feet.

These were the only times when my parents seemed relaxed, and happy with one another. I wished it could always be like this. Those were idyllic days, rare occasions when I felt free and at peace with the planet, holding my breath in wonder as I saw, further out in the bay, the whales that had come in to breed.

Chapter 3

‘I’m glad he’s dead’

Whites-only benches in Windhoek. Photo: UWC – Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives.

JUST BEFORE I reached my teens, apartheid hit me right between the eyes. Had I been unaware of its injustice until that moment? No, but I’d not yet matured enough to think about how I would deal with it, or try to do about it in the future. In the 1960s, interaction between black and white people was almost non-existent, unless one made a conscious effort. It was mostly a case of ‘us and them’, and socialisation across the racial divide was virtually unthinkable, even for those who believed it was wrong to separate people on the grounds of race or colour. ‘Race relations’ happened mainly between employers, mostly white, and employees, mostly black. People were poles apart, and the NP government wanted things kept that way.

In later years I would mull over the different ‘philosophies’ underpinning the upbringing of children in Afrikaner families and those in English-speaking homes. There were disparities, including cultural ones, but they were slight. The belief among ‘liberal’ English-speakers that they were better or more ‘progressive’ than their Afrikaner counterparts was an illusion. Essentially, both groups discriminated against others, and bought into apartheid in different ways. This included my own family.

Today, rather futilely, I still argue the case for non-racialism in what remains a deeply unequal post-liberation society, in which awareness of race seems to be as tenacious as ever. As a young reporter in the 1970s I forced myself to ‘unlearn’ those colour classifications, and at one point my editor and I resolved to stop referring to race and tribes, a common feature of news reporting at that time. I still baulk at identifying ‘black’ or ‘white’, unless it is relevant to do so, as this works to emphasise racial divides and worsen race-based inequality. The same goes for tribal differences and identities. How, I would argue, could we ever achieve equality if we constantly drew these distinctions, and saw ourselves in rigid ethnic terms?

A year or two ago, I had this very discussion with Bience Gawanas, and it sometimes became quite animated. Bience is an indomitable woman. As a young South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) supporter and opponent of apartheid, she had gone into exile, only to be incarcerated in Lubango, Swapo’s infamous detention centre in southern Angola. I’d known her for many years, but we hadn’t seen much of one another for a while. When she was young, growing up in the small town of Tses in southern Namibia, her brother, Jeka, was murdered by unknown whites while hitchhiking. Or so she and her family believed, although police described his death as an ‘accident’ rather than a racist attack. It affected her badly, spurred her into studying law, and triggered her departure into exile not long after.

While I drank tea and Bience a glass of wine, we talked about the ‘old days’ in which we’d all tried to practice non-racialism. I bemoaned the fact that everything was still viewed in terms of ‘black’ and ‘white’, and insisted that the former colonisers would have derived great delight from the way things had turned out in Namibia, with suspicion and hatred mounting rather than diminishing across racial and ethnic divides.

I tried not to think of myself as ‘white’, I told Bience, as that in itself seemed arrogant. I recalled that, when we applied for identity documents back in the day, I’d tick the ‘other’ box rather than the ‘white’ one. Many compatriots also refused to be defined in terms of race or tribe. We were already affirming ourselves in terms of our Namibian-ness, rather than the tribal affiliations that apartheid had glorified.

Bience insisted that she was ‘black’ and I was ‘white’, and there was no getting away from it. We agreed to disagree and, even though Bience urged me to ‘own your whiteness’, it made no sense to me. I’d felt no affinity with most whites during much of my life, experienced no cultural pull, and despite the shared privileges associated with this skin colour, I found it difficult to identify with them.

Many people born after apartheid are unaware of the deep divisions between Afrikaans- and English-speaking whites in both South Africa and its former colony. Perhaps less so now, as English- and Afrikaans-speakers generally ‘get on’, but vestiges of the prejudice inculcated in us as children still remain. Unfortunately, this is also true of different black tribal entities in Namibia.

While I led a relatively sheltered life, I knew from an early age that apartheid was wrong, as was ‘othering’ and prejudice of any kind. Respect for diversity taught at home and convent schools, and the orientation of a few reasonably independent English-language newspapers, helped to consolidate my views. But the NP propaganda machine was in full swing, and radio stations also helped to fuel bigotry and bias towards but also among black people. It was a classic case of divide and rule.

A ban on The Beatles added insult to injury. I was a young fan when, in the mid-1960s, John Lennon said that they’d become more popular than God, provoking the Afrikaner community’s Christian national ire. The government reacted swiftly, banning Beatles music on the radio. While I refused to do it myself, even Catholic nuns at the Holy Cross Convent School in George I attended at the time asked pupils to bring their Beatles records to school, to be burnt on a bonfire. This was the setting – a small, conservative and mainly Afrikaans-speaking ‘dorp’ – in which my political conscience and consciousness began to develop.

At that time, the NP government was still headed by the ‘architect of apartheid’, Hendrik Verwoerd. He wasn’t popular in our home, and my parents were derisive when he was reported as saying that his survival after being shot in the head by an English-speaking farmer meant that God had approved his racial plans. But while many English-speakers didn’t like Afrikaners, they did not seem to experience too many problems with the policy of apartheid, because they too benefited from the oppression and exploitation of the black majority.

Possibly the worst justification of the apartheid ideology was the insistence that it was sanctioned by the Bible, and no one emphasised this more than Verwoerd. So there were few tears among English-speakers, let alone black South Africans, when he was fatally stabbed by Dimitri Tsafendas in parliament in 1966. ‘I’m glad he’s dead’, I announced to my horrified convent classmates in George at the time, several of whom scuttled home after school to tell their parents what I’d said. In turn, they rebuked my parents at a parent-teacher meeting, urging them to discipline the daughter who had dared to express such outrageous views. ‘You shouldn’t say that sort of thing,’ my mother chided when she got home. ‘Even though he wasn’t a nice man, you can’t say you’re glad someone has been killed.’ I refused to change my opinion, but I wasn’t punished, because I think my parents half-agreed with me.

Formative influences from abroad included the American Civil Rights Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War. Drawing on these currents, I openly expressed views that went against the white consensus in South Africa at the time. Most people believed the Vietnam War was a justified fight against communism, and opposition to the Civil Rights movement was more of the same, except the latter was regarded as doubly evil in that adherents were perceived to be both black and communist. The protest music of that era and the famous Woodstock festival also contributed to my new-found rebelliousness. As the protests against the American involvement in Vietnam gained momentum, the United States was finally forced to abandon a war that had never been theirs to fight in the first place. I was jubilant about what I saw as a victory for the peace movement.

But apartheid in South Africa was a different matter. When I look at photographs of those days, I feel a sense of unreality. Everywhere one went there were ‘whites only’ signs. Did we really live in an era as awful as this? Even beaches were segregated, with the most beautiful, sandy ones reserved for whites, and the rocky ones with dangerous tides for black people.

Black and ‘coloured’ employees were mostly nameless, faceless, even invisible. During the day, they slaved in white homes and moved like shadows in more affluent neighbourhoods, returning to their rudimentary homes in the bleak ‘townships’ at nightfall. Some domestic workers ‘slept in’, usually in small back rooms, so they could be at their employers’ beck and call 24 hours a day. The ‘lucky’ ones could shed their uniforms when they got weekends off, but few whites gave thought to the lives and families of their ‘garden boys’ and ‘maids’, as they were called.

I observed how cruel and unfeeling people could be. To watch an elderly black woman having to step off a pavement to make way for a group of arrogant white teens would make me boil with anger. When I moved to intervene, my mother would warn me to keep my counsel.

My parents were not apartheid adherents by any means, but I figured that by virtue of their privilege, they were part of an unjust system. While largely agreeing, they would still argue that they didn’t benefit directly from apartheid. My father, they’d say, started out on the bottom rung of the banking world, and only managed to rise through the ranks by dint of hard work and dedication. No one had done him any favours, and he hadn’t got where he was because he was ‘white’. On the contrary, the fact that he was English-speaking had worked against him. I argued back by saying if dad had been black, he might not have had a job at all.

My parents practised and preached civility, but I also picked up on their inconsistencies. Why, I’d ask my mother, was the gardener given his lunch on a tin plate, and tea in a tin cup, instead of the cutlery and crockery we used ourselves? She usually brushed me off, either because she didn’t know how to respond, or did not want to account for her prejudice.

During the family quarrels, I usually had an ally in my grandmother, but she’d generally keep her own counsel when the altercations got too heated. While my parents would say they hated the NP government and all it stood for, the one thing they did not contest was the need for compulsory military service. One had to support one’s country in a time of war, they argued, and this was about patriotism rather than party politics. So they had no issue with the fact that white youths had to serve one and then two years in the South African Defence Force (SADF), with most conscripts being sent to the ‘border’ between South West Africa (SWA) and Angola. There were stiff jail terms for those who refused.

When my brother, two years younger than I, was ‘called up’, there were heated family arguments. ‘He shouldn’t go. He should refuse to fight’, I’d remonstrate with my parents, who became really angry when I raised the subject. ‘What? Are you prepared to see your own brother go to jail?’ they’d say. ‘He has no choice. And besides, he will be defending our country, you included.’

When I later asked my brother how he had felt about being called up, he said he’d seen it as something of an adventure. What young white boys hadn’t read books like the ‘Biggles’ series, about a young pilot and adventurer, and others about youths going off to war to ‘serve their country’? My brother was no different. Like most of his peers, he wasn’t aware of the complex politics underpinning the conscription system and the undeclared war on the ‘border’. He had simply looked towards doing his duty as a loyal young South African.

Eventually, my parents realised that I would also be putting myself in danger, only in a very different way. I tried to convince myself they were concerned about me too. ‘Why do you have to do this, Gwen?’ my mother would ask. Perhaps it was an attempt to understand why I’d chosen journalism as a way of tackling apartheid, rather than choosing another career that wasn’t about politics and wouldn’t require the sacrifices I’d be required to make. ‘Let others do it,’ she’d urge. I would try to explain that there were too few whites who were prepared to stand up and be counted.

In my early teens, during one of my spells in Cape Town with my grandparents, I had what I later termed my ‘Rosa Parks experience’, and from then on there was no turning back. My daughter says it was my ‘aha’ moment. Regarded as the ‘mother’ of the civil rights movement in the United States, Rosa Parks was arrested after she refused to give up her seat to a white man in the front section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama¸ in 1965. This motivated a youthful Dr Martin Luther King and others to organise the Montgomery bus boycott, which led to the US Supreme Court declaring segregation on buses illegal just more than a year later.

In a TEDx talk in Windhoek in 2014, I described my seminal experience as follows: ‘It’s South Africa in 1966. I’m a schoolgirl of thirteen, travelling home on a crowded and segregated public bus in the Cape Town southern suburbs, with black people upstairs and whites below. An elderly black woman gets on the bus, laden with parcels. I see she won’t make it up the stairs, and so I get up to give her my seat. She takes it, and white passengers explode with abuse towards both of us. The hurt in her eyes strikes me like a bolt of lightning. In that instant, my life changed irrevocably, my conscience was fully awakened, and my passion ignited. I resolved never again to remain silent in the face of injustice in general and the oppressive reality of apartheid in particular.’

I concluded: ‘Although she must be long gone by now, my heartfelt thanks go to the little old lady … who awoke my conscience and showed me the way. So my guest seat’, I said as I pointed to a chair in the front row, ‘is empty tonight because it belongs to her.’ After I spoke, a few people were in tears.

Chapter 4

Back to black

In the