The Girl Who Chased the Rainbow

Sarah-Leah Pimentel

 

“Lekker! No school for a week!” Patricia exclaimed loudly, so that the whole class could hear.

“That is not what I said,” Mrs McCrae replied drily.

“Ja, but you’re the only teacher who hasn’t given us homework to hand in,” Rachel retorted, somewhat defiantly.

Mrs McCrae stared pointedly at Rachel. Then she looked at each of us in turn. The silence became a little awkward. Finally, the History teacher spoke. “Girls, I don’t think you appreciate this moment. We are all about to witness history being made. Things in our country will never be the same.”

“What I’ve asked you to do next week is to observe and document. Watch the news. Go and look at the voting lines. Take photographs.”

Patricia interrupted: “The news is boring. It’s just old men talking. And what’s the big deal about an election anyway?”

Nandipha stood up and waved a finger at Patricia: “You don’t know anything. You’re so stupid. All of you are. Ma’am is right. The election is going to make Nelson Mandela our new president. Then black people will be free.”

I sat at my desk quietly in the back of the class, watching with concern. Nandipha had a temper. She’d been known to slap girls who disagreed with her. The last time that had happened, the whole class had to stay after school for detention. I really didn’t want to have to stay at school longer on a Friday before a week off.

It was April 1994. It was our first year in high school. We had just come back from Easter holidays. Less than a fortnight later, all the schools were closing for a week. There was going to be a big election. It would be the first time in the history of South Africa that all citizens would be allowed to vote to choose their new president.

Nobody knew how it would all turn out. But everyone knew one thing: Nandipha was right. White rule in South Africa was over. Twenty million people would be voting for a new president. Most of these people had never been allowed to vote before because under the apartheid system, black people in South Africa had no voting rights.

Now that the majority of the country’s population would finally be able to say who they wanted as their president, it was clear that they would not choose a government that had oppressed them for nearly five decades.

Kristen raised her hand: “Ma’am, I’m not sure that it will be safe to go out during the voting. My dad says there’s going to be lot of violence. We’ve bought a large amount of tinned food so that we don’t need to go outside next week.”

Mrs McCrae’s look softened somewhat. “Girls,” she said, “none of us know what is going to happen next week. Maybe there will be people shooting in the streets. Maybe there won’t. That is why the school is closing for a week. To make sure that you’re all safe. But that doesn’t mean that this election has nothing to do with you. Nandipha is right. Apartheid kept black people from having the same rights as white people. That has to change.”

This was a bold statement to say out loud in South Africa in the early 90s. But it was not bold for our school. Ours was a “mixed school.” This meant that our school had children of all races in it. For example, our Standard Six (eighth grade) class had 25 girls. Ten girls were black, three were Indian, and 12 were white.

Under apartheid, mixed schools were not really allowed. The government schools (public ones) were all segregated. Ours was a Catholic school and their part in the struggle for true freedom was to provide equal education to all children.

Right from my first years of primary school, I knew that it did not support apartheid. We used to sing “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (God bless Africa) instead of the national anthem “Die Stem van Suid Afrika” (the Call of South Africa). At the time, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika was a banned struggle hymn. Today it is our national anthem.

Our teachers constantly reminded us that apartheid was bad because it divided people. In religion class, the nuns taught us that God loved all people and he made them all equal. They encouraged us to treat one another with respect.

Some parents sent their children to a “mixed school” because they wanted them to have a Catholic education, while the interracial aspect was the price they paid. Other parents shared the school’s mission. Black parents often worked very hard to afford the fees, because they knew their children would not receive a good education in the black government schools.

But with the country’s political reality about to change, many of the white parents were concerned that the new dispensation might be worse than the old. They must have spoken about their fears because these played out in the classroom among my peers.

Angie raised her hand and asked fearfully: “Ma’am, will white people still be safe in the new South Africa?”

Palesa replied: “Of course, Mandela wants a South Africa that belongs to everyone.”

Angie wasn’t convinced: “But didn’t Mandela go to prison because he was a terrorist?”

Nandipha, as always, had an opinion, interjecting: “Mandela isn’t a terrorist. He is a freedom fighter. He went to prison because he was fighting for black people.”

Mrs McCrae must have realized that this was a good time to bring the lesson to a close. She stopped the discussion and reminded us once again that we were witnessing history in the making. She urged us to keep a diary, watch the news, go out on voting day if it was safe to do so. She reminded us: “We can’t see the future. But you are the ones who will build this new South Africa. Make it the country you want to live in.”

***

South Africa’s first democratic elections came and went. Nandipha was right. Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president. The four days of elections were a national celebration, and the television showed hours of footage of long, snaking lines across the country as people waited patiently to vote for the first time.

In rural areas, people travelled and queued for days to cast their vote. In the cities, black and white people stood together in the long queues. People chatted with one another, some for the very first time. My parents were not citizens and couldn’t vote, but my dad and I walked to the two polling stations near our house and watched how people had brought garden chairs and picnic baskets, preparing to share a few snacks with their neighbours during the long wait.

There had been so much violence leading up to the election that no one could have imagined that the four days of voting would be a peaceful celebration of our new-born democracy. It was so peaceful, that we would be eating the tinned food we had bought “just in case” for months afterwards!

The tone of the election was like a breath of new air that spread throughout the country. When Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa’s first black president in early May, there was a sense of hope that we could become a “rainbow nation,” a home for people of all races and all backgrounds.

Of course, there were those who wanted revenge for years of oppression. Some seem hellbent on restoring the old status quo. Others believed that the rainbow dream wouldn’t last. Despite its traumatic history, South Africa began the slow, arduous task of rebuilding a society.

Part of that rebuilding was the education of a new generation of children like my classmates and me, who would become the business and political leaders of the future. A first step was the desegregation of schools.

The government announced that from January 1995, all schools should be open to children of all races. For me and my peers at our “mixed” Catholic school, nothing changed. We had shared school desks and played the school grounds together since we were six.

But for my friends who attended government schools, the long summer holiday of December 1994 carried a sense of foreboding and nervousness.

Roberta and I were lying in the grass on a hot summer afternoon. We were sharing earphones and listening to Roxette’s new “Crash! Boom! Bang” cassette on Roberta’s Walkman. We talked about boys. We paged through Seventeen magazine, looking at the latest fashion and the clothes we wanted for Christmas.

Suddenly Roberta said: “I’m really scared about school next year.”

“Why?” I asked. Roberta was a year younger than me and she was starting high school. I figured she was nervous about meeting the new kids, missing some of her old friends, especially since her best friend was going to a different school.

But her answer surprised me: “What’s it going to be like with black kids? My mom says the standard of education is going to go down, because the blacks haven’t learned the same things at their old school. They can’t speak English properly either.”

For me, that had never been an issue. There had always been black and white kids in my class. In fact, if ever anyone had complained about a student holding others back, that student would have been me. I arrived in Grade 1 with only a smattering of English. My native language was Portuguese. I learned to speak English at school.

I don’t remember all that much about my first few years at primary school, but I know that it was probably only in about Grade 4 when I realized that we were taught two languages at school. English was our language of instruction. Afrikaans was taught to us as a second language. I probably never excelled at Afrikaans in 12 years of school because I missed out on some foundational taal rules in Grade 1 when I didn’t know the difference.

I can’t recall any teacher making a special effort to ensure that I understood what was going on. What I did remember was constantly being in trouble for having got the wrong end of the stick!

It had never occurred to me that my inability to speak English properly could hold back the academic progress of the other children. So, it seemed strange that my friend was expressing fears that another child’s language skills would somehow deprive her of an education.

I had learned in History class that the apartheid government had created the Bantu Education Act of 1953 to educate the children of different races for the kind of life they were expected to lead. White children were educated in a very classical way, preparing them for university studies and other academic pursuits. Black children were educated to enter the labourer classes.

I agreed with my friend that maybe the level of math among the black kids who would be coming into her class would different, but my youthful idealism didn’t see that as a problem.

At our “mixed school,” we had a buddy system. When a new came from another school and the teacher perceived them to be “behind” in their subjects, they would pair the new student with one of the top performing students and have them help their new classmate. I was sure Roberta’s new school would do the same.

I sought to reassure Roberta: “Eish, it won’t be so bad. Black kids are just like us. Some listen to the teacher, others don’t. If they want to be there, they’ll learn. If they can’t keep up, the teachers need to do something.”

Roberta wasn’t convinced: “But what about other stuff? Like hanging out at break? What if they don’t like us? What if we don’t like them? Are the teachers going to force us all to be friends?”

I wasn’t really sure how to answer her. Even at my school, friendships were for the most part divided according to colour lines. The black kids hung out together and spoke their mother tongue at break time. The cool kids – mostly white – hung out together and made everyone else’s lives miserable. Then there were the “nerds” like me. We were a multicultural group of misfits – black, white, Indian. Among us there was no colour. We were defined simply as being too “uncool” for anyone else to talk to.

It probably would take another two generations for South African schoolkids to learn to interact more freely with each other, something that I saw years later as a teacher. In 1995, official apartheid was over. But the clearly defined social groups were still divided along the lines of colour. Mandela’s “rainbow nation” was still more dream than reality.

***

It was a cold winter’s day when I first experienced the pride of being a child of South Africa’s “rainbow nation.” It was June 1995. It was the afternoon South Africa beat New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup final.

Rugby is more than a national sport. It is a national religion. You can’t be South African if you don’t like rugby and braais (barbecue).

I suppose in many ways I wasn’t a true South African. My parents were immigrants. We were Portuguese. The only sport we watched in our household was soccer.  We didn’t have braais; I didn’t even know the rules of rugby. But that final match at Ellis Park Stadium, less than 15km from my house, remains in my memory forever.

Like everyone else in South Africa, I was caught up in the euphoria of the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Our new president, Nelson Mandela, took a personal interest in the World Cup. He recognized that there was never a better chance to unite black and white in a moment of national pride as we hosted the Cup and were on display for the world to see our brand-new democracy.

From the moment that Vicky Sampson sang “African Dream” at the opening ceremony, the hearts of a nation were united behind a common goal: to show the world that South Africa was different from the rest of the continent. We could undergo a political transition without bloodshed and civil war.

To this day, when I hear the lyrics of that deeply patriotic and hopeful song, my eyes fill with tears. It captures the nostalgia of my youthful belief that we could become a united country:

I listen for your call, I listen for your heartbeat

Alone my dream is just a dream

Another false illusion, a shadow in the night

All I want is for our hearts to be beating just as one.

Ultimately that was the South African dream – for the horrors of apartheid and division to be behind us. For us to live side by side without hatred, without rancour. The international rugby anthem, “World in Union,” for a few weeks meant much more to us than just another rugby song. It captured the gees (spirit) of this hopeful, young nation:

Gathering together

One mind, one heart

Every creed, every colour

Once joined never apart.

We were a nation reborn. In the words of the World Cup anthem, we were indeed “a new age [that] has begun” and we were anxious to “take our place in history and live with dignity.” In those early days of democracy, we had no idea how hard – and at times seemingly impossible – that dream would be to achieve. Many times over the next 25 years, we would falter. The wounds of the past would fester and would emerge in ugly incidents of racism, barbaric crime, an aggression almost unequalled in any other part of the world.

But on that June afternoon in 1995, everything was possible. And I was unmistakeably, proudly South African. My parents had gone out for the day.  I was home alone. I should have been studying for mid-year exams.

As I sat in my room, I could hear the festive mood outside the window in my neighbourhood. Every television was set at full blast. Cars in the street were hooting in expectant celebration, waiting for kick-off. I couldn’t possibly study.

Giving up on my books, I turned on the television and sat down to watch my first rugby match (and only one of two rugby matches I have ever watched from start to finish). I had heard my friends at school saying that it would be impossible for us to beat the All Blacks. South Africa had only recently been allowed back into world sports after years of political sanctions. It was our first World Cup as participants and as hosts.

Miraculously, we had passed the group stages, the quarterfinals, the semi-finals. And here we were, facing the world’s best rugby team and the favourites to win. Realistically we couldn’t win. Despite the odds, the entire country stood behind the Springboks, willing them to play the best rugby of their lives. This was about so much more than rugby. This was to be a foundational moment for our new nation. We, the people, knew this. The 15 players on the field knew this.

Defying all odds, South Africa took the victory in extra time, when Joel Stransky scored a drop goal that brought the Webb Ellis cup home to South Africa. Although I was watching alone, without a single friend to share the moment, I cried with joy and pride when Mandela and the South African captain Francois Pienaar raised the cup in what would become one of the most iconic photographs in the history of sport.

If we could win a rugby world cup against all odds, surely we could achieve anything. Over the years, whenever South Africa found itself on its knees due to poor leadership, corruption, and social instability, sport has always helped to restore our national pride and remind us of the nation we want to become.

During the “Zuma years,” when corruption under the watch of President Jacob Zuma had reached unparalleled levels of impunity, South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup, and we showed the world what we could achieve when we work together. International media said that we’d never be able to pull it off. But we did, in style. A nation united around soccer for a month.

In 2019, amid service delivery protests, political wrangling, and what seemed to be an endless spate of killings of women across the country, optimism was at an all-time low. Rugby once raised our national spirit. We had lost one of our matches in the group stages and the pundits had written us off as a contender for the trophy. The first-ever black Springbok captain, Siya Kolisi, again led the team to victory against England in the final in Japan.

For the second time, now as an adult, I watched the rugby match alone in my house. For 60 minutes, I was reminded of the youthful euphoria of the 14-year-old who watched the Springboks capture the hearts of the nation and the world all those years ago.

Realism has replaced the youthful illusions that all obstacles can be overcome. But somewhere, deep down inside, the girl who became a woman during the early days of the “rainbow nation” still carries the hope that this country, my South Africa, will one day stand proud among the nations as a success story despite all its difficulties.

***

“All you whites must just get back on your ships and go back to where you came from.”

We were in History class. It was 1998 and we were preparing for our Matric exams to graduate. The subject was colonialism.

As usual, Nandipha had a very strong opinion. It didn’t go down well. The class was small – only eight girls – and all were very outspoken. I also no longer sat quietly at the back of the room. I was the head of the debating society and her comment seemed unsubstantiated.

“And where the hell do you think we’re supposed to go?” I asked.

“You go to Portugal,” Nandipha retorted. “Rachel can go back to England and Celeste, where are you from, Holland? Well, go back to where you belong.”

Rachel was having none of it. “I was born in South Africa. So were my parents and grandparents. England is not our home. South Africa is.”

“Only black people are from Africa,” Nandipha spat out viciously. “The rest of you came to steal our cattle and our land. You brought us brandewyn (fire wine, an expression for alcohol) to make us stupid. You bought us with coloured beads and made our people slaves. In the Battle of Blood River, the blood of the Zulus that you English killed, gave the river its name.”

The teacher observed this latest argument anxiously. Mrs McCrae had long since left the school. Our current teacher, Miss Rebelo, was a young, new teacher. She had no idea how to navigate the almost daily disagreements that broke out in her class.

“Come girls, this is going nowhere. Let’s focus on the lesson. The textbook explains how colonialism wasn’t all bad. The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English brought good things too.”

“Get real, Miss,” Nandipha interrupted. “Colonialism was only good for the white man. For us blacks it was the beginning of 400 years of oppression.”

Celeste decided to join the conversation. “Maybe it’s a bit of both. The colonialists brought some bad things but maybe also some good things. Think of the missionaries. Many of them came here to start churches and be teachers.”

“More bad than good,” Nandipha muttered under her breath. She picked up her history textbook and threw it across the room, declaring: “And this, this is apartheid history. The whole book tells us that colonialism was good, that African countries cannot rule themselves, that communism is bad and capitalism is good.”

Finally, something Nandipha said made sense to me. I remembered the question from last week’s test: Explain why the rise of capitalism is a better economic model than Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. I had read the two models in my textbook. Nandipha was right, the textbook made capitalism sound good and communism bad. But to me, sharing possessions equally seemed a lot better than some people having a lot and others having nothing.

“Well, maybe Nandipha is right,” I said. “Maybe the textbooks do need rewriting.” I turned to the front of the book. “See, this book was published in 1987. This is before Mandela was released. This is before democracy. I read somewhere that education during apartheid was indoctrination. Maybe they wanted us to believe this stuff. But maybe it doesn’t make sense anymore.”

Nandipha and I had never been friends. Yet, we shared a mutual respect. She had first arrived at the school in Standard Four (sixth grade) and she’d been paired with me as her “buddy” to help her catch up with her schoolwork. We had shared a double desk. For the first few weeks, she refused to speak to me. Then one day, in knitting class, she dropped her needle. I picked it up and gave it to her. That was the day she began speaking to me.

Years later, Nandipha explained that the moment I did that was the first time a white person had done anything nice for her. While I was under no illusions that she liked me, I felt that she perhaps hated me less than some of our other classmates.

Maybe this is why her next comment in that tension-fraught History class was worth more to me than gold.

Nandipha knew that I wanted to be a teacher after I left school. “Ok,” she said. “When I become South Africa’s first female black president, I’ll make Toni my Education Minister.” She looked at me. “Your job will be to write new textbooks. You can stay. But the rest of you,” she said, waving her hand at the others in the class, “the rest of you can voetsek (bugger off) to where you came from.”

Looking back, I realize that those History lesson disagreements were unique in the South Africa of the late 90s. In our “mixed school,” many of us had been classmates for between 5 and 12 years. We were comfortable enough with each other to talk about race and politics so openly. I often felt sorry for our teachers, who looked on helplessly during these conversations. And not all conversations ended as tamely as this one!

Over the last 26 years, the issue of race has made the headlines frequently. Often it involves allegations against a white person who has made racial slurs against a black person or a politician who sees criticism of policy or corruption as racist if it comes from someone who is not black.

These incidents, more often than not, generate hateful racist conversations on social media. Looking at how people of my generation engage in these conversations, I realize that they are having them for the first time, whereas my classmates and I were debating these weighty issues in the classroom 20 years ago.

We need to talk about race. We need to talk about the wounds of the past. We have realized that the “rainbow nation” is deeply flawed. Mandela tried very hard to unite all the people of South Africa around a common narrative that encouraged us to work together to build a country that belongs to everyone.

But the “rainbow nation” is a myth. There are deep-seated resentments, fears, and trauma. Until we can speak about these openly and find the necessary healing, our rainbow will remain a faint hue against a stormy sky.