I didn't answer him. Her life is an extraordinary tale of a search for identity in a system built on race and prejudice, where home, school, job and sex life was demarcated by skin colour. Deals and discounts in Tablets you dont want to miss. No one could give her a forwarding address for her parents. Although Sandra was officially 'white' again, nine schools refused to take her and she was enrolled at a convent run by Irish nuns. While Sannie was happy to see her daughter and grandkid, she told Sandra to leave before her father returned. Her paternal grandparents were Alfred Laing (18741962) of Memel, Germany (now Klaipda, Lithuania) and Hester Sophia Goosen (18771949); her maternal grandparents were Adriaan Roux (18761967) and Susanna Magrietha Veldman (18861967), after whom Sandra was named. Sandra Laing : The Black South African Girl Born To White Parents During Apartheid. Deals and discounts in Nails you dont want to miss. He threatened to shoot first me then himself if I ever put my foot over his threshold again." Sandra's school teachers explicitly stated that they didn't want her to go to any white institution in South Africa. Sannie also met Sandra's brown family and was delighted to see her daughter after so long. Finally, we can settle this easily today. One can easily imagine an African man and Laings mother producing a child who looks like she does. For example, on the genes which control between population variation in, people of sub-Saharan ancestry and northern European ancestry are often disjoint in allele frequencies. Not long after that, they made love for the first time. Ali Jones Curtis Scott Joann Glapion John Laing Julius Scott Linda Scott Lydia Scott Michele Perkins Sandra Scott Alfred Glapion Andre Jones Annette Mack Annie Mack Arianne Mack View . Today there are ~3 million Afrikaners. How do we assess the probabilities of paternity vs. re-expression or recombination of genetic variants which code for African phenotypes within the Afrikaner population? Entered by Sandra Glover at registration. After ~100 generations the ancestry should be approximately equally distributed across the population, but far less so on the order of 5-15 generations. And what about proving her mothers maternity? "I was afraid she was still mad at me. She has said in interviews with The Guardian and Little White Lies that she continued to hope they would some day have a change of heart.[4]. A few years ago I thumbed through a book which detailed Laings tumultuous life, When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided By Race. 'I felt sad and shocked. Local parents began to take their children out of the school, and the principal wrote to the education authorities declaring himself certain that Sandra was of mixed blood. Save up to 70% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine. advocates for a healthy discussion about the instances of violence, abuse, sexual misconduct, animal cruelty, abuse etc. It would have been strange anywhere - but in apartheid South Africa it was disastrous. [5] She was expelled and escorted home by two police officers. speaks out against the above mentioned and. Such an argument turns out to be entirely conceivable. Then he began hitting her with a sjambok, a whip traditionally made of leather thongs or rhinoceros hide. Sandra Laing as a little girl. We raise awareness about these issues to help potential victims seek professional counseling and prevent anyone from getting hurt. She said I must look after myself, and also that I should not make contact with her again,' says Sandra. Sandra Laing is a South African woman who was classified as Coloured by authorities during the apartheid era, due to her skin colour and hair texture, although she was the child of at least three generations of ancestors who had been regarded as white. [4], Although she and her husband had two children, who were classified as "Coloured", she was threatened with losing them unless she also was classified as "Coloured", as a white parent could not raise Coloured children. The tests they used to prove her fathers paternity could have been faulty. Douglas Laing-whose Rock Island blend I recently reviewed and liked -issues an annual Christmas edition of its Big Peat blended malt, which is a cask strength edition. Sandra recently celebrated her fiftieth birthday, surrounded by family and friends another milestone for an indomitable survivor . Im saying, it looks like somebody in her family was lying. It was a joyful reunion, but the aftermath was marred by the fury of Sandra's brothers. of these combinations will occur within such a large population is high. 'I'm afraid you're going to have to leave us,' the principal told her. At the age of 10, she was expelled from her all-white school, and the authorities' decisions based on her appearance . E-Book Overview. Find the best deals on Women's Handbags & Wallets from your favorite brands. Ancestry kits could identify the proportion of non-European ancestry they have; one would expect if they were full-siblings and the offspring of their legal parents that they would all be mostly European, with a substantial non-European fraction. But a blood test that could rule out paternity was available. MPAA rating: PG-13 (for thematic material, some violence and sexuality). Sandra Laing (born 26 November 1955) is a South African woman who was classified as Coloured by authorities during the apartheid era, due to her skin colour and hair texture, although she was the child of at least three generations of ancestors who had been regarded as white.At the age of 10, she was expelled from her all-white school, and the authorities' decisions based on her appearance . | Source: YouTube.com/Our Life. Her Afrikaans-speaking parents, Abraham and Sannie Laing were white shopkeepers from the Eastern Transvaal (now called Mpumalanga). Years later she married again, to Johannes Motloung, a Sotho-speaking man. Note:Because I post on this topic now & then, I would like to add that I do get distressed emails from mixed-race women who are frantic to convince their significant other about paternity. with the fact that both parents expressed society-typical racial attitudes in regards to apartheid? Gradually, her relationship with Zwane soured, and to save her and her children's lives, Sandra ran away in 1979. Still, the conversations she enjoyed most were with the school's Zulu driver, Samuel. 27 years later in 2000, a local newspaper helped facilitate a reunion with her mother before she died. By now Sandra felt more at ease with non-whites and at the age of 16 she eloped with a Zulu-speaking vegetable-seller, Petrus Zwane. 'I liked being with Johannes,' she says. The system also proposed an appeal system where people who believe they have been misclassified could plead their case before the Race Classification Appeal Board. life. The couple welcomed a child, Steve, and along with her five children, Sandra finally felt stable and loved. The farmers contention that hybrids do not breed true has empirical reality, and this manifests when mixed individuals mate with mixed & unmixed individuals. The apartheid system was an all-encompassing one in South Africa as it dictated whom one could marry, residence, jobs, and so much more. Sadly, she was refused because she was underage, and her father wouldn't consent. Heres a photo of Sandra with her brother Adriaan. In apartheid, South Africa, a person's racial classification determined several aspects of his life, like who he could marry, where he could live, and the kind of work he could get. He accused her of fooling around with other men and turned violent. She called, and they spoke for the first time in 16 years. As apartheid entered crisis in the 1980s Sandra tried in vain to contact her family, only to learn Abraham had died and Sannie did not want to see her. South Africans were segregated into four groups: whites, Asians/Indians, colored, and blacks. 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She offers up her own evidence - photographs of herself with her baby brother, Adriaan, taken when Sandra was 11 and Adriaan was a year old. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Today, Sandra lives as a national icon and has found her unique place in the world as a black woman. People whose parents are of these two populations (e.g., Barack Hussein Obama) can be expected to beheterozygouson the loci controlling this trait. Save up to 50% on Trending when you shop now. By a biological quirk, the pigment of an unknown black ancestor had lain dormant for generations and manifested in Sandra. . By Urban Woman. . But there were still holes in Sandra's heart, a profound longing for her white family. Born to a conservative Afrikaner family, Sandra's fate was to not be what she was supposed to be. After exhaustive inquiries, Sannie was traced to a retirement village outside Pretoria, less than an hour's drive from Sandra's home. 'I just felt more comfortable with them.'. Myprevious postsabout the fact that fraternal twins canappearto be of different races because of the way genes randomly recombine in offspring from parents shows that this isnt impossible in principle. Sandra and Petrus were devastated. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. The parents were even tested to prove that she was their daughter and finally Sandra was reclassified when the laws were changed to accommodate white parents with different looking kids. Many people have tried to contact Laing's brothers over the years . As you can see Adriaanhas frizzy hair. Laing and her husband separated due to the pressures they were under, and she put their children into government care for a period. I had wanted to ask him for forgiveness before he died,' says Sandra. However, 9 years later, her brothers allegedly still refused to have anything to do with her as they believed she was the cause of their parents unhappiness. Some even accused her mother, Sannie, of having an affair with a black man. Under such a system, a dark-skinned Sandra grew up with no sense of color and only wished to be happy and play with her friends. It was run by Instagram user [], One of my favourite Nigerian female authors is Buchi Emecheta. In January 2000, Sandra stood at the entrance to a visiting room twisting a white handkerchief in her hands. They were like my own people,' she says. Sandra still hopes that, one day, they will meet. Continue with Recommended Cookies. Save up to 50% on Women's Clothing when you shop now. That is until she was 10 years old and the South African government stepped in and claimed she was "colored," a term used during the apartheid. $1 Million - $5 Million. No one told her that her mother had died until after the funeral, and Sandra is convinced that was because her brothers didn't want her there. Sandra and her brothers are still alive. She was clueless regarding her mother's whereabouts until she found her through a Johannesburg Sunday Times journalist. Shortly afterwards, her three elder children were returned to her. Thankfully, Abraham took a paternity test to silence the critics, and the results proved he and Sannie were Sandra's biological parents. Sandra Laing was born in 1955 to two white Afrikaners. You see, Sandra was dark-skinned, but her hair texture caused a lot of confusion and teachers had been trying to have her kicked out of school. At 26, she found her first steady job at a cosmetics factory and often visited her children still at the welfare. I try to get you in a good school and now you're busy with kaffirs!" She said in a 2009 interview, At first I was very angry of White people and angry of the apartheid government for [making me choose to be a different race other than my parents], but I decided that it doesnt help to be angry. 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