The publication of Jacob Dlamini’s Native Nostalgia – which treats, among other things, the unexpected phenomenon of fond reminiscences of apartheid days by blacks – inspired journalist James Clarke to dig up Ben Maclennan’s 1990 book The Lighter Side of Apartheid and do some reminiscing of his own:
Dlamini insists that we should “not dismiss such sentiments simply because they make us uncomfortable”.
There was certainly a bizarrely funny side to apartheid.
Zulu journalist Nat Nakasa said: “I shudder to think what would happen to us if apartheid did not have some comical aspects.”
For much of the apartheid period parliamentary reporter Ben Maclennan, then of the South African Press Association (Sapa), kept cuttings from newspapers and extracts from Hansard that illustrated what Nakasa meant. He published them in a book in 1990 titled The Lighter Side of Apartheid (Chameleon Press).
One of my favourites was headed “Seeking Clarity”. The chairman of the Group Areas Board, Dr van Rensburg, explained the law on race classification thus:
The Group Areas Act defined three races – “White (hitherto known as ‘Europeans’), Native and Coloured”. All those who fell between White and Native were regarded as Coloured. But the act allowed the Coloured group to be subdivided into Indian, Chinese, Malays and those commonly known as Coloured people. The Malays were regarded as Malays only as long as they lived in their own group area of Schotsche Kloof. If they moved into another area, even across the road, those Malays became Coloureds, he explained. (Cape Times, March 2 ,1961).
Book details
Please register or log in to comment
*
