Anelia Schutte - For The People

A STORY OF SMALL-TOWN APARTHEID

Anelia Schutte grew up in Knysna – a beautiful town on the coast of South Africa, centred around a picturesque lagoon and popular with tourists. But there was another side to Knysna that those tourists never saw. In the hills surrounding the town with its exclusively white population lay the townships and squatter camps where the coloured and black people were forced to live.

Most white children would never go to the other side of the hill, but Anelia did. Her earliest memories are of being the only white girl at a crèche for black children that her mother, Owéna, set up in the 1980s as a social worker serving the black community.

Thirty years on, Anelia, now living in London, yearns to find out more about her mother’s work, and to understand the political unrest that clouded South Africa at the time. She returns to Knysna to find the truth about the town she grew up in, from the stories and memories of the people who were there.

For the People is an exploration of apartheid South Africa through the eyes of Owéna – a white woman who worked tirelessly for the black people of Knysna and found herself swept up in their struggle. They called her Nobantu : ‘for the people’.

For the People

A story of small-town apartheid

Anelia Schutte

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Anelia Varela 2014

Anelia Varela asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9781472090980

Version: 2019-01-11

Contents

Cover

Blurb A STORY OF SMALL-TOWN APARTHEID Anelia Schutte grew up in Knysna – a beautiful town on the coast of South Africa, centred around a picturesque lagoon and popular with tourists. But there was another side to Knysna that those tourists never saw. In the hills surrounding the town with its exclusively white population lay the townships and squatter camps where the coloured and black people were forced to live. Most white children would never go to the other side of the hill, but Anelia did. Her earliest memories are of being the only white girl at a crèche for black children that her mother, Owéna, set up in the 1980s as a social worker serving the black community. Thirty years on, Anelia, now living in London, yearns to find out more about her mother’s work, and to understand the political unrest that clouded South Africa at the time. She returns to Knysna to find the truth about the town she grew up in, from the stories and memories of the people who were there. For the People is an exploration of apartheid South Africa through the eyes of Owéna – a white woman who worked tirelessly for the black people of Knysna and found herself swept up in their struggle. They called her Nobantu : ‘for the people’.

Title Page For the People A story of small-town apartheid Anelia Schutte

Author Bio ANELIA SCHUTTE has lived in Cape Town, Durban, London and New York, but she still calls Knysna home. She’s been writing ever since she could hold a pencil: essays for school, poetry for fun, and eventually copywriting for a living. Her short story, The Unkindness of Ravens, was published in From Here to Here: stories inspired by London’s Circle Line in 2005. Somewhere in a drawer she also has an unpublished children’s story about a bullied dung beetle. Now based in New York, Anelia is chief creative officer at The Writer. The rest of the time she runs along rivers and over bridges, makes bobotie and rusks for her American friends and spends hours on the phone to her mother. For the People is her first book.

Dedication For my mother and father, for everything

Author’s note Black South Africans: descendants of the many African tribes in South Africa, each with its own culture, language and traditions going back several thousand years. The most prominent of these are the Xhosa and Zulu people. White South Africans: descendants of the Europeans who settled in South Africa from the mid-seventeenth century, notably the Dutch and the British. White South Africans fall primarily into two groups based on their native language: English or Afrikaans. Coloured South Africans: a term commonly used in South Africa for people of mixed race with some African ancestry, usually combined with one or more lineages including European, Indonesian, Madagascan and Malay. Mainly Afrikaans - speaking, they’re also known as ‘bruinmense’ (‘brown people’).

Prologue 1984

Introduction

Chapter 1 Going home

Chapter 2 Back to my childhood

Chapter 3 1970

Chapter 4 Digging

Chapter 5 1970–1

Chapter 6 Colourful stories

Chapter 7 Xenophobia

Chapter 8 1972

Chapter 9 Jack and Piet

Chapter 10 1972

Chapter 11 1972–8

Chapter 12 Queenie

Chapter 13 The funeral

Chapter 14 1978–82

Chapter 15 1982

Chapter 16 Township tour

Chapter 17 1982

Chapter 18 Mrs Burger

Chapter 19 1983

Chapter 20 Crèche tour

Chapter 21 1983

Chapter 22 1983

Chapter 23 Oupad

Chapter 24 Tembelitsha

Chapter 25 1983

Chapter 26 Theron

Chapter 27 1983

Chapter 28 Memories of apartheid

Chapter 29 1983

Chapter 30 Johnny

Chapter 31 1984

Chapter 32 1986

Chapter 33 Lois Bubb

Chapter 34 1986

Chapter 35 Amy Matungana

Chapter 36 Trouble

Chapter 37 Esther Xokiso

Chapter 38 1986

Chapter 39 David Ngxale

Chapter 40 Lawrence Oliver

Chapter 41 1986

Chapter 42 1986

Chapter 43 Tapped

Chapter 44 1986

Chapter 45 Elizabeth Koti

Chapter 46 1987

Chapter 47 1987–8

Chapter 48 Winile Joyi

Chapter 49 1988

Chapter 50 Goodbyes

Epilogue 1994

Acknowledgements

Copyright HQ An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014 Copyright © Anelia Varela 2014 Anelia Varela asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. E-book Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9781472090980 Version: 2019-01-11