LIGHT ON A DARK SECRET - Interracial love and relationships under the repressive regime of Apartheid E-Book

Glynnis Hayward

• Herausgeber: Abela Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Insightful, Revealing and Shocking! A glimpse of what it was truly like to live and love across the colour bar  under the repressive regime of Apartheid.  In 1982, Fran Walker was born in California and given up for adoption. Twenty years later, she is on a quest to find her biological parents and solve questions that have plagued her since childhood. Four women are the storytellers and each narrates her perspective of events that began in 1980, when two students fell in love in South Africa. In addition to Fran, the women are her birth mother, biological grandmother, and adoptive mother. 1980 was a difficult time in apartheid-era South Africa for those who opposed government policies; it was extremely dangerous to act outside the law. As a bi-racial couple in a country governed by strict laws of racial segregation, Valerie and Johan’s love affair was clandestine. The consequence of their forbidden love, if discovered, would be immediate incarceration. A child from such a union was unthinkable. Discovering she is pregnant, Valerie is faced with imminent exposure. Unable to communicate with Johan, who is being closely monitored by the police, she makes decisions that will have far-reaching consequences. Her actions, as well as those of her mother, Sharon Spencer, and Grace Walker – Fran’s adoptive mother, raise the question: More than biology, what does it take to be a mother? Fran despairs when, amidst prejudice and recrimination, her search discovers a family alienated and broken. But the journey to South Africa is a coming of age for her when she falls in love with a fellow student. She gains insights which help her understand and forgive the circumstances that surrounded her birth.  

Leseprobe

Light

on a

Dark Secret

By

Glynnis Hayward

Light on a Dark Secret

Copyright © 2012 Glynnis Hayward

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system) without the prior written permission of the publisher or author.

Published by

Abela Publishing Ltd.

Sandhurst, Berkshire, England

Email

[email protected]

Website:

www.AbelaPublishing.com

ISBN 13: 978-8-822812-73-5

Print Edition, 2012

eBook edition, 2017

An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance.

The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.

- An ancient Chinese belief

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to former President Nelson Mandela and publishers Little, Brown Book Group, for giving permission to quote from his autobiography, LONG WALK TO FREEDOM.

(Copyright © 1994 Nelson Mandela)

I am profoundly thankful to my friend, actress and writer, Penny Bunton. She reviewed my work with insight and honesty. Penny also shared her story with me as she searched many years, on multiple continents, to find her birth mother. I was honoured to be part of the search party; it was her quest that sowed the seed for LIGHT ON A DARK SECRET. Other friends, who are adoptive mothers, enabled me to see the story from their different perspectives. My thanks go to them as well.

I am also thankful to Ken Andrew for sharing his experience and knowledge of South African politics during the apartheid era.

Thanks to Kristin Campbell Hart for describing her experiences as an American student, studying abroad in South Africa. Her observations were illuminating.

My family has been patient and supportive. Writing can be solitary, but Brian listened, critiqued and encouraged; Graham and Kate’s design advice was invaluable; artwork on the cover is from an original pastel by my daughter, Lindsay Rothwell. Thanks to all of you.

Last, but not least, thanks to John Halsted of Abela Publishing, for his guidance and patience.

FOREWORD

“Apartheid not only discriminated politically and economically against people who weren’t white, it also dictated how everyone conducted their private lives, from conception to the grave. The Immorality and Mixed Marriages Acts were two of the laws that caused widespread angst and misery. As an opposition MP, I was asked to assist people who wanted to change their race classification so that they could marry someone they loved, but who was classified in a different racial group. It was distressing to witness what personal pain and suffering was caused by those Acts that outlawed intimate relations and marriage between races.

As the impracticality of apartheid became obvious and unmanageable, adjustments were made and some Acts were repealed. But through the 1980s, the apartheid government was determined to maintain an iron-fisted grip on the situation; bannings, detentions without trial and hit squads remained regular occurrences.”

- Ken Andrew.

Ken Andrew was an opposition Member of the South African Parliament from 1981 to 2004. He was heavily involved in the constitutional negotiations from 1992 to 1996 that brought about longed-for change to the new, democratic South Africa with Nelson Mandela as president. Mr. Andrew has long been an advocate of human rights and an important voice in South African politics.

The Immorality Act 1927 and Mixed Marriages Act 1949

were both repealed in 1985.

All characters and events in

LIGHT ON A DARK SECRET

are fictional.

PART 1

VALERIE SPENCER

Injustice never rules forever.

- Seneca

Chapter 1

When I think back, it’s hard to know which was greater: happiness, because I was in love – or fear, because I was in love. Whatever my feelings were, despite the obvious dangers of our love affair, I was in denial that we might be caught. I was young, after all.

Johan Barnard came into my life at a student conference when I was eighteen years old. He caught my eye immediately I entered Student Union Hall; he was standing on a raised dais, engrossed in conversation with the Student Council President. The room was teeming with so many people that their voices reverberated around the brick walls and high ceiling, making it sound like a crowded bazaar. It was my first year at University and the freedom of new ideas and people was exhilarating. This conference was a novel experience for me; we were combining forces with students from the medical school, situated on a different campus. They were not on a different campus because they were medical students, but because we were white and they were not. Ours was a whites-only campus, by government decree.

It was August, the beginning of second semester, and although it was winter, the days were warm and sunny. Returning from July vacation, many of us had been congregating at our usual meeting place on the steps leading down into the Student Union. That’s where I heard that somebody in one of the men’s residences had obtained the banned Pink Floyd tape, Another Brick in the Wall. Supposedly it was top secret that he had it, but it was fairly common knowledge. News like that spread fast. Who cared that the government deemed it subversive? We were elated that somebody, returning from a controversial cricket tour to England, had smuggled a copy into the country. Protestors had boycotted their matches wherever the team had travelled abroad, so their only real success was getting hold of contraband. It not only satisfied our curiosity to see what we were being denied, but it was also an act of defiance; we didn’t want to be cut off from the outside world because of a government we despised. Customs officials rigorously searched luggage of returning overseas passengers, so it was a miracle to outsmart them. This smuggler had sewn the tape recording into a cricket pad. Banned books and magazines were confiscated from the rest of the team, but the tape went undetected – a small victory in the battle of students versus government. Buoyed by this win, I entered the Student Union Hall with plans to hear the music later.

That was the moment when I saw Johan. I couldn’t stop staring at him; he was so good-looking that I was surprised not to have seen him on campus before. I’d been there a full six months already; there weren’t so many people that somebody like that would go unnoticed for long. He stood out from the crowd; tall, dark-haired, with a self-confident presence. Eager to see his name tag and try to wangle a meeting, I pressed forward – and then I saw his visitor’s sticker. I froze in my tracks. He was a coloured