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This book is dedicated to the memory of my beloved daughter, Sandi Pearl, who passed on twenty two days before her fourteenth birthday in March 2002. The memories of her ministry to the choir, Spiritual dancing, and junior youth still today lingers on in the memories of many young people from the Factreton township whom she regarded as her peers, and they in return looked up to her.
I also dedicate this book to my son, Robin, Medical Doctor, and Psychiatrist, who passed away after attending a psychiatrist’s conference in a Drakensberg Mediclinic on October 25, 2021, aged forty-one. His mother, Valda, and I are still grieving this unprecedented and unexpected loss. Robin, in particular, was keen to see this book published. He was exemplary in life, conduct, ethics, and intellect, and made us, his family, and colleagues proud. He was, undoubtedly, a product of the hope and success of a new South Africa.
However, the circumstances leading to the passing on of my children in relation to the treatment they received at the respective medical institutions have been a blatant reminder to me, that, if they were of the white race, the results may have been different. No amount of litigation will bring them back, but I am comforted that in Sandi’s fourteen, and Robin’s forty one years, they have left a legacy of goodness and hope, relative to their exemplary achievements. In addition, their mother Valda and I live with beautiful memories of them.

Sujets

Relationships

Religión

Biography

Memoir

Relationship

Politics

Religion

Family

Autobiography

History

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Publié par	AuthorHouse
Date de parution	10 mai 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9798823005661
Langue	English

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A CHILD OF APARTHEID

A Memoir of A Colored Capetonian

Noble F. Scheepers

AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 833-262-8899

© 2022 Noble F. Scheepers. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/09/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-0567-8 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0566-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

New King James Version (NKJV) Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.; New Life Version (NLV) Copyright © 1969, 2003 by Barbour Publishing, Inc.; New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
My story could be the story of tens of thousands of nonwhite, mixed race, people of color, ethnicity, culture, class, and caste born and living in a world of white supremacy. My formation, its manifestation that led to insecurity, and circumstances do not seek to be pitied, or to seek empathy. I have grown to pursue, encounter and embrace opportunities of privilege and leadership in the church and society. I represent the tens of thousands of lower-class colored children who lived through the fifties and sixties. Those who lived under a draconian apartheid regime. Those whose parents and grandparents were conditioned to rigidly obey and respect the little privilege they were offered, in many cases giving up their homes, jobs, and security in order to obey the law.
These acts of obedience permeated through the very core of most colored people who had even the minimal position of authority, but the manifestation of this limitation instituted acts of vicious class distinction and dictatorship in their limited environment. During my childhood, it was often painful to see lower class coloreds and blacks at the mercy of upper class coloreds and white persons; at school, in church, and in the public domain. Authoritarian and dictatorship were engendered deeply into the behavioral and entrenchment of white and class superiority. As a young teenager I was invited by a friend to witness beatings of white policemen towards colored drunks in the charge office of the Athlone Police Station. Often, colored policemen would drag a totally inebriated man into the office, and if he was unable to answer any question, he would be physically punished. Burly white policemen would say to one another, “Ko ons panelbeat hom!” (A term used for body repairs to a motor vehicle). They would take this person into a side room and beat him until he screamed for mercy. The apartheid system fueled this type of behavior. How would this victim heal out of this ordeal? How would he fit back into life and society? Would he ever find a semblance of decency towards police and white people when he sobers up? Yet he is numbered among thousands of black and colored men who experienced degradation and beatings at the hands of the oppressive regime on a regular basis.
This ideology of racial group superiority that justifies or prescribes a system of racial domination or exploitation, racism is perpetuated by the beliefs and behaviors of individuals and by the institutions in which they are embedded. It was interesting to note, that many of the white police at the Athlone Police Station, as well as the white train drivers and conductors who worked on the Cape Flats line lived with their families in a cordoned off housing section behind the police station in the heart of Athlone, a colored town. Later in years, a magistrate’s court was built next to the police station to accentuate white presence and dominance. The violence of gangsterism, police brutality, the viciousness of class distinction became the narrative, lens, and experience of my formative into my adult years. These feelings were substantiated by my early identity as a “Cape Coloured,” nevertheless, a second-class citizen bound to a law that subjugated black people to a third-class level, with the deliberate omission of the word “citizen.” The servile pigmentation was promulgated by the echelons of apartheid. We lived in a police state with a group of elderly, white Afrikaners at the helm.
Although I was never proud about my early identity as a “lower-class” colored, I was proud to be a colored, and today I take pride for the many who gave me opportunity, agency, and encouragement. My parents, especially my mother, who protected us like a “mother hen”, my siblings, especially my sister Avril, with whom I grew up together because we were the youngest, the many friends from middle-class families, who dared to visit me in the blocks. My god-mother, Bertha Scheepers, who always had a tender spot for me and supported me through even after my ordination. My son, Robin, psychiatrist, who had been my counselor, friend, and dear loving son, who kept close contact with me. For Valda, the mother of my dearly departed children, who endured the challenges of being a priest’s spouse. I give thanks to God for the three bishops who were instrumental and influential in my calling and ministry in a divided church. Bishop Edward Mackenzie, who became a loving friend, (who too, struggled as a colored outside the realm of Cape Coloured identity), Bishop Charles Albertyn, a no-nonsense dark skinned colored bishop whose wit made me think of him as a regular guy. I appreciated his decisive, but gentle manners in our regular conversations, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whose example of leadership, compassion, and holiness during the destructive struggles of church and state, and my own personal struggles, makes him a modern-day saint.
The congregations of Bonteheuwel, Elsies River, Factreton, and Crawford have all revealed determinations to be Christ-centered, and walked beside me through friendship, ministry, development, and agency. I must confess that, at times, they appreciated my social vibe approach. The “council-house” coloreds of Kewtown, Bokmakierie, Bonteheuwel, Manenberg, Hanover Park, and District Six, Mitchell’s Plain, Langa, Nyanga, and Guguletu had been a latent part of my formation. Prominent lawyers, doctors, principals, business executives, priests and politicians born in these towns have grown to prominence, and I salute them today. Determination, in spite of the odds, have been the measure of their success. “You are the salt of the earth….the light of the world….Let your light so shine before people, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-14, 16).
This book is a memoir, and by its “kitchen language and Cape Colored cultural expression may at certain places may not seem factual, or unbecoming given my vocation, but seen through the lens of my eyes within the contexts of my growth, pain, and successes before I emigrated to the USA. This book is meant for the eyes of the beautiful people of the Cape Flats and surrounding areas of Cape Town. I may have appeared harsh towards white and colored folk based upon my different encounters with them. It would be inappropriate to paint them all with the same brush. Many of them had displayed loyalty and support towards me. In addition, it would seem “ignoble” and unchristian for me not to seek forgiveness. Growing up in the council flats in Kewtown and frequenting the glass strewn rip-tide colored beach of Strandfontein for respite became a metaphor of my life. I started out beautiful and whole, and developed a purpose. But somewhere along the line I became broken and discarded. But life has a way of throwing us into a journey, throwing a curved ball at us, and then over time, polishing us till we start to shine. There may be certain references and experiences that could be perceived as inaccurate, but it had been perceived through the lens of my eyes. May God Bless you all.
CHAPTER 1
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, bef ore you were born I set you apart;” Jeremiah 1:5
Family background
My father’s name was Arthur. His parents for me were personally unknown. They died before I was born. I saw photos of father’s mother and sisters when I was a child. They had strong West Indian features. I was told they were from the Island of Tristan De Cuna. My father’s father was a white Dutchman and a hunter. I saw a photo of him next to a carcass of a springbok. These photos were in possession of my father’s sister, Minnie. My father spent most of his formative years in Kimberley, a diamond mi