Growing Up In White South Africa

This book is a short collection of memories about being white and living in South Africa during Apartheid. I wrote this book for the reader to easily understand what it was like to live in this environment. It is not a history lesson, but some personal experiences that I went through living in South Africa at the time. Living through apartheid I never even realized that it even existed, because we were brought up to believe that it was normal. Life was paradise for me and hell for others! Many of us did not know or care, and even if we did try to change the system, it would have resulted in prison or death. We believed that changing apartheid would have caused the country to fall into the hands of the communists, and many white people were fearful that black rule would have destroyed South Africa and their lives. The other side of the coin is that I cant comprehend what the lives of most blacks was like, which was excruciatingly difficult, something that I didnt personally experience. Our history books never taught us anything good about blacks. I cant remember ever learning anything positive that blacks did. What I did learn was that they were lazy, uneducated, dangerous, and drank a lot. Stay away from them, and if they bother you call the police. There were serious injustices in South Africa, and many black people suffered under the Apartheid Regime.

This story of a middle-class white South African family unfolds between the years 1939 and 1964 - a transformative period in South Africa's political landscape. It is told through the eyes and experiences of the younger son and his rite of passage into a country of racial segregation that gradually opens his eyes to the many injustices imposed upon the majority of the country's population, coupled with a realization that his white privileges are sustained at the brutal expense of others.On a personal level the narrative is a romping journey through the adventures of post-war youth searching for self-identity in a rapidly changing world. It is also a spiritual journey and a breakaway from religious bigotry and prejudice. It is very funny, romantic and adventurous with many young people expressing greater sexual freedom than their parents and grandparents, as they enter an increasingly technological age where the stars are now the limit. The reader is introduced to a tapestry of many fascinating characters reflecting the social and political milieu of the time. To sanitize the vulgarity of its protagonist and his friends in their sometimes wild behavior and language, would be an injustice to the reality of their varied experiences, immature and lacking in discernment as they were at times.As the narration is told in the first person, the storyteller concedes that his account of the people and events recorded may find contradiction and correction in the memory of others who were also there at the time, but that is the nature of any shared experience.About the AuthorNEVILLE HERRINGTON is a former SABC radio journalist and senior lecturer in the Department of Speech and Drama at the University of Natal in Durban; he wrote and directed the double-bill "Strike" and "On Strike" which marked the opening of the university's Square Space Theatre and his political satire, "on Strike", was among the dramatic works chosen to celebrate the opening of the Asoka Theatre. He also wrote "Ulster of the Southern Cross", "The Sullivans of Skeerport", "Still Life" and "The Thorn Child" which played at the City Centre Theatre in Durban, and the Upstairs of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. He is a recipient of a Durban Critics' Circle award for his 'distinguished contribution to the arts in Natal' and is the author of two new historical novels on the Anglo Boer War: "England Wants Your Gold" and "The Irish Boer Woman" both of which are available on Amazon books and Kindle. He has a PhD in TV drama and recently co-produced, with his wife Sandra, 'The Flawed Genius of Jan Smuts,' - a major drama-documentary set against the Anglo Boer War and the 1st and 2nd World Wars which is available in dvd format on Amazon.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.

Ufrieda Ho’s compelling memoir describes with intimate detail what it was like to come of age in the marginalized Chinese community of Johannesburg during the apartheid era of the 1970s and 1980s. The Chinese were mostly ignored, as Ho describes it, relegated to certain neighborhoods and certain jobs, living in a kind of gray zone between the blacks and the whites. As long as they adhered to these rules, they were left alone. Ho describes the separate journeys her parents took before they knew one another, each leaving China and Hong Kong around the early 1960s, arriving in South Africa as illegal immigrants. Her father eventually became a so-called “fahfee man,” running a small-time numbers game in the black townships, one of the few opportunities available to him at that time. In loving detail, Ho describes her father’s work habits: the often mysterious selection of numbers at the kitchen table, the carefully-kept account ledgers, and especially the daily drives into the townships, where he conducted business on street corners from the seat of his car. Sometimes Ufrieda accompanied him on these township visits, offering her an illuminating perspective into a stratified society. Poignantly, it was on such a visit that her father—who is very much a central figure in Ho’s memoir—met with a tragic end. In many ways, life for the Chinese in South Africa was self-contained. Working hard, minding the rules, and avoiding confrontations, they were able to follow traditional Chinese ways. But for Ufrieda, who was born in South Africa, influences from the surrounding culture crept into her life, as did a political awakening. Paper Sons and Daughters is a wonderfully told family history that will resonate with anyone having an interest in the experiences of Chinese immigrants, or perhaps any immigrants, the world over.

"Boet,"said Kevin, "there's a jazz somewhere down by the assembly hall where okes can do what they smaak, and I hear from reliable sources that it's lekker down there." Like most children of the 1970s and 1980s, Richard Poplak grew up obsessed with pop culture. Watching The Cosby Show, listening to Guns N'Roses, and quoting lines from Mad Max movies were part of his everyday life. But in Richard's country, South Africa, censorship in the newspapers, military training at school, and different rules for different races were also just a part of everyday life. It was, as Richard says, "a different kind of normal." Ja, No, Man articulates what it was like to live through Apartheid as a white, Jewish boy in suburban Johannesburg. Told with extraordinary humour and self-awareness, Richard's story brings his gradual understanding of the difference between his country and the rest of the world vividly to life. A startlingly original memoir that veers sharply from the quotidian to the bizarre and back again, Ja, No, Man is an enlightening, darkly hilarious, and, at times, disturbing read.

Growing up in the new South Africa is based on rich ethnographic research in one area of Cape Town, together with an analysis of quantitative data for the city as a whole. The authors, all based at the time in the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town, draw on varied disciplinary backgrounds to reveal a world in which young people's lives are shaped by an often adverse environment and the agency that they themselves exercise. This book should be read by anyone, whether inside or outside of the university, interested in the well-being of young South Africans and the social realities of post-apartheid South Africa.

My Race is the memoir of a gifted Jewish athlete growing up under the apartheid system of South Africa. As both an outsider excluded from the conservative Christian mainstream and an insider who reaped many of the benefits of a society founded on white supremacy, South African track star Lorraine Lotzof Abramson had a unique vantage point on the apartheid experience. Her grandparents left Eastern Europe to escape oppression, only to find themselves in another oppressive society. This time, by virtue of their white skin, they were on the same side of the fence as the oppressors. Lorraine's first-hand account shares her ambitions, her achievements, her losses, her family ties and her growing unease with the system of social inequality that simultaneously excluded her and celebrated her. Along the way, Lorraine learns that the real race the marathon that is a long and eventful human life is a journey towards compassion.