Daughter of Apartheid by Lindi Tardif

Author:Lindi Tardif
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/Personal Memoirs/Historical/Political
Publisher: Elm Hill
Published: 2019-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

Can “They” Be on Your Side?

With John Paul, the issue was that no one knew what to expect from an Indian person at Wits then, and that worked to his advantage in some cases. For many White people, the problem was quite the opposite: people “knew” exactly how these Whites thought and behaved. They believed they could tell all about a White person just by looking at his or her skin, and sometimes they were absolutely wrong.

One of these White people was Stephen Lowry, my history teacher at Sacred Heart, a mixed-race, private religious high school. Mr. Lowry had been born in 1961 to parents who hated apartheid, and who had seen many of their like-minded friends tossed into prison or sent into exile by the South African government. As a schoolboy, Mr. Lowry was active in the Young Christian Students, a non-racist movement dedicated to ending apartheid, where he met and befriended Black youngsters. One of his friends was a Black leader of the 1976 uprising who was imprisoned and tortured while still a teenager.

Upon completing university, where he was active in anti-apartheid protests, Mr. Lowry and his friends decided the best way for them to strike against apartheid was to refuse the compulsory military service—the South African army was, after all, used to enforce the evil system. And so, Mr. Lowry took a trip to Lesotho, then snuck back across the border. According to his passport, he was out of the country; the South African military duly received letters from him, saying he was now in England, now in Holland, traveling and studying. But he was actually in South Africa, where he wrote those letters and sent them to friends in Europe, who would apply the proper stamps and mail them to the South African draft board, thus “proving” that Mr. Lowry was not available for military service. The military wrote back saying all was fine, let us know when you return so you can “do your duty.”

Mr. Lowry took a job working for the Catholic Bishops Conference, helping conscientious objectors like himself avoid military service yet stay out of jail. Through his work at the Conference, he was involved in the End Conscription Campaign (ECC), which was launched in 1984. He traveled about the country and around Europe, raising money for the ECC, and he subsequently became the organization’s national treasurer. As the ECC was prohibited from raising funds outside the country, the money he gathered—plus money from others—was quietly brought into the country by the Catholic Church for the work of the ECC.

It was a dangerous time. Some of his friends and colleagues were tossed in jail. His own house was petrol-bombed, with three bombs thrown at his home. Mr. Lowry was finally snatched up by the police and detained for a couple of weeks. He didn’t want to go into exile, preferring to remain in the country and teach youngsters a new way of viewing and treating both themselves and the “other.” So the Church sponsored his studies and gave him the job at Sacred Heart.

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