JONATHAN JANSEN | No white person had asked me this question until these teens dared to

It took 30 years since our democracy for something this amazing to happen, and I was unprepared. The six grade 9 girls from the prestigious Afrikaans girls’ school in Stellenbosch came to my office on time, perfectly dressed in their school uniforms with hair neatly in place as they sat upright around the large table in my boardroom. In front of them nothing but a page of questions, a pen and writing paper.

A few weeks before their teacher had asked if the youngsters could interview me for a school project. Of course, I said yes as I do with any students wanting to talk with me on anything from financial assistance to helping them write their first book. But this was different. These were junior high school girls with a lead question no white person had ever asked me before: how exactly did apartheid affect your personal life?

I had long ago settled on the fact that no white person was going to ask any black person that question whether for reasons of shame, embarrassment or outright denial. Now, as I looked at these young South Africans who did not exist when Nelson Mandela was released from prison and must have been born in the late 2000s, I was astounded by their courage and confidence as they started the interview.

What I will never forget from that inspiring hour with these young women was the reactions one could read from their faces and, occasionally, put into words as they expressed themselves about one or other story shared.

So I started with the story of my life, the unawareness of apartheid as a young boy enjoying soccer, swimming and Sunday school until one day something snapped, and the reality of apartheid hit me. My father and a fellow elder in our church were driving our families from Cape Town to then Port Elizabeth for a mix of church and family gatherings when at a stop along the N2 highway a young white policeman insulted the two older men with a racial epithet. They dare not answer back, I realised, and an anger grew that became a lasting memory.

As I shared this story with the grade 9 girls, I found myself overcome with emotion and took a moment to recover; when I opened my eyes, I saw that my visitors were too. It was the humiliation of these dignified men at the hands of a white youth that remains with me, I explained.

There were 23 questions on the two pages, so we needed to move on. I had to correct their use of “population groups” as part of the telling and the teaching happening that afternoon. Race is not real on either biological or theological grounds; it was made up to separate us. No, apartheid was not simply “separate living”; it was a system of racial oppression and economic exploitation. (Of course, I did not use those big words to make the point with 15-year-olds).

Yes, my mother’s family lived a comfortable middle-class family off Montagu’s main street under apartheid, but with the loss of their home to whites my generation could not inherit money or residential properties. I took a moment to teach the girls about the concept of the intergenerational transfer of wealth and how that simple fact explains the racialised inequalities today.

Smart and insightful beyond their years, I noticed the young interviewers straying from their script as they responded to what I said not only what they had planned to ask. That takes considerable skill, I thought, as our interaction was now in free flow. What was the impact of apartheid on your self-image, emotional health and self-confidence? The question was deep but sensitively posed, and my responses were empathetically received.

I noticed they dropped some of the questions quite likely because by now they realised that some those prepared items no longer made any sense, like one about quotas in sport — even before the national rugby team took New Zealand to the cleaners.

What I will never forget from that inspiring hour with these young women was the reactions one could read from their faces and, occasionally, put into words as they expressed themselves about one or other story shared. It was clear to me that much of what they heard they simply did not know and that they were wise and mature enough to make some rapid recalculations about the world they thought they knew.

I was nevertheless curious about their level of understanding of what was shared with them, so like any teacher I gave the girls a homework assignment that often stretched my postgraduate students. They were tasked to interpret this powerful quote: “Race is a fiction that draws real blood.”

When I received their individual written responses about a week later, I was stunned by the sheer ability and insights of these amazing young people. I wrote to the principal and told her how proud she could be of her students and that South Africa’s future was in safe hands with the calibre of these future leaders. The principal read out the letter in a school assembly.

One of the girls wrote to me observing that “history keeps repeating itself, but we need to keep trying though, one conversation at a time”.

Amen, my leader.