children can be provided with a decent education. I soon discover that my dream to be at Helderberg is turning into a horror story, instead of my accustomed playing tennis and swimming in the afternoons, we have to do ten hours of manual labour a week; to develop body, mind and spirit, while realising the dignity of work. My first assignment is ironing shirts in the laundry for pocket money. Earning some wages is little compensation for the many long hours that my tears mingle with the spray to damp the wretched boys’ shirts. I wouldn't say I like every minute of it; I could be playing tennis or swimming if I had stayed home. By contrast the school work is fun, and I love the challenge of remaining first in my class. My classmates are great and prompt my already competitive spirit.
One hot afternoon a lady teacher who takes us for physical education asks me to take the class for her. I do so with pleasure as I love to move and exercise, but when it happens repeatedly, I go to the Registrar whom we secretly call PapaRaitt, a soft-spoken British gentleman, with that British sense of humour which I love. I ask him what remuneration I should expect for taking the class. He is shocked to hear that the teacher has shifted her responsibility to me. After that I often find my way to his office, trying to figure out how ‘things work’ at Helderberg. One day in frustration, and with a twinkle in his eye, he calls me a suffragette, as though it is something questionable and I am not sure of the word. I run to the library to look it up in a dictionary and rather fancy being a woman activist, an advocate for the right to vote for women. So, I look up the history of the suffragist movement. I am shocked that women needed to be allowed to vote. One of Emmeline Pankhurst’s many speeches impresses me; delivered in 1908, the year of my Daddy’s birth, [“I for one, friends, looking around on the muddles that men had made, looking around on the sweated and decrepit members of my sex, I say men have had the control of these things long enough. … We are tired of it. We want to be of use; we want to have this power [to vote] so that we may try to make the world a much better place for men and women than it is today. …. Perhaps it is difficult to rouse women; they are long-suffering and patient, but now that we are roused, we will never be quiet again.” During her trial on 21 October 1908, she told the court: “We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.”]1
Imprisoned for aggressively campaigning for female suffrage in Britain, Emmeline went on hunger strikes in prison and eventually saw the law passed in 1918, the year after Mummy’s birth, giving women over 30 years old, the right to vote. She persisted, bringing the age restriction down, and three weeks after her death on 14 June 1928, the law was passed allowing all women, over the age of 21, to vote.
In 2014 I discover a lovely statue of Emmeline Pankhurst at the junction of the Houses of Parliament and the adjoining gardens in London. What a reward, after first encountering the story fifty years ago. I realise that it has impacted my life more than I imagined at the time; giving me a sense of camaraderie with Emmeline and other bold women when the headwinds and the riptides I have experienced, have almost overwhelmed me. Yes! To the South African women’s march to Parliament in Pretoria in 1956, 50 years after the courageous suffragettes marched. Patiently peacefully!
It’s October 1960, and I recall the conversation my parents had two years previously about changes the new government would bring. The announcement of the results of the National Referendum; the question posed to the Union of South African white electorate is “Do you support a Republic for the Union?”
The Referendum results: 52% say yes. Although, at 15 I am not interested in politics, the Sharpeville massacre earlier that year has raised attention and enormous fears for us in the Western Cape and also for our parents living only a couple of hours away from Johannesburg's’ township called Sharpeville.
[On 21 March, it is reported that 69 people died and 180 are seriously injured, when the newly formed Pan African Congress (PAC), led by Robert Sobukwe, inspired thousands of protestors to demonstrate peacefully against the carrying of passbooks, by marching to the Sharpeville Police Station. The report notes that the police were armed with Saracens and when an officer is bumped over by the crowd a scuffle ensues, and police open fire! Later in the day a group of protesters in Langa, a township near Cape Town gather in defiance of the nationwide banning order for gatherings of more than ten persons.]
Unfortunately, three people die in Langa and 26 are injured. Now the ‘unrest’ is closer to my home – 20 miles away from Helderberg College. The only black people at the College are farm and kitchen workers, so suspicion of all black people becomes familiar and the events at Sharpeville and Langa are seen as insurrection by both the government and many Whites.
[Hendrick Verwoerd seems to have used the fear of white people for the black masses, and the condemnation of the international community for the Sharpeville massacre, to support his plea for a Republic… South African history asserts that he used these two issues as a means to lower the voting age to 18 and included the South West African White electorate to ensure a ‘yes’ vote. He also disregarded the ‘two-thirds majority rule to change the constitution’ to succeed. He intended for South Africa to stay in the Commonwealth of Nations. But, when he went to London to reapply and argue apartheid as good labour policy, he was met with widespread opposition from Non-White new Commonwealth members and other Prime Ministers who supported racial equality as a principle of Commonwealth membership. He, therefore, withdrew the South African Application and when membership lapsed on 31 May 1961, the Republic of South Africa was born.]2 My parents are very uncomfortable with this development and Daddy starts searching for a way out by looking at farms in Rhodesia. But now I return to my life at Helderberg College,
“Why did Potifers’ wife want Joseph to sleep with her?” asks my classmate Eunice during a Scripture lesson.
“Oh, Euney!” I cry out in surprise that she can be so naïve.
“Well Miss Hartley we aren’t all as brilliant as you,” she retorts.
I feel slightly ashamed for embarrassing her, but the laughter of the class is ample incentive to carry on being ‘brilliant’!
During long weekends we have some freedoms as there is no school, so Gill Baxter, my best friend, and I cycle to the Strand which is temptingly in view from the College. We pack our swimwear in a pannier of two borrowed bicycles and launch into an adventure. We have great fun playing in the waves before cycling up the steep hill back to College.
Ginn and Gill - 1960
It’s just as well we don’t know what the future holds; we will each lose a precious child in the same year; Ashley at 23, to a medical blunder when a doctor prescribes pain medications that clash with his asthma meds; and Lyndi also at 23, to a politically instigated attack of revenge.
Later, in my penultimate year of High School at Helderberg, Pastor Stevenson is elaborating the gift of boy-girl relationships to the Seniors. He suggests that men should not ‘pick a rose while it is still a bud’. My boyfriend Rob, in his quiet, considered way responds,
“Surely, a rose picked as a bud would bring enjoyment with the unfolding of its petals!”
I am teased unmercifully by all who have heard the comment, and later as news spreads, I am admonished by Ian, to be careful. Although there are strict rules separating boys and girls; limiting time to talk to each other to about ten minutes before mealtimes only. I understand what Ian is saying,
“But I am not Potiphers’ wife!” I protest.
In class, when I feel bored I hide a book on my lap and read something more exotic, without being visible to the teacher. One such book is ‘Desire of the Ages’, written by the Adventist prophetess Ellen
