and that he had to attend a black-tie event a few weeks later.
‘Would you please accompany me?’ he asked. I agreed, and we spoke a while longer before he left. As I walked up the stairs back to the third floor I had a very clear, slightly unsettling thought. I entered the room and found two of my friends waiting. ‘Well? What happened?’ they asked excitedly.
‘It was Wilhelm Verwoerd,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m almost certain this is the guy I’m going to marry one day.’
‘Wow! That was fast!’ laughed Nicolene.
‘No, I’m not even sure if I like him very much,’ I said in a daze. ‘I just can’t shake this feeling.’
This was the first of a series of what some would call ‘premonitions’ (I prefer the term ‘clear thoughts’) that I would get throughout my life, all of which would lead to dramatic changes and take me down roads that would be life-altering.
The event was fun. Wilhelm was charming and entertaining, and by the end of the evening I liked him a lot more. But I was worried about his family connections. When I had phoned my mum to tell her he had invited me to the ball, she responded: ‘You have to be very careful. His family are extremely conservative.’
So when Wilhelm called next, I confronted him: ‘Look, before we talk any further, I need to know where you stand politically.’
I could hear that Wilhelm was slightly taken aback, but he responded that he was to the left of the National Party. I could live with that. After the ball, we saw a lot of each other and grew increasingly close. Yet it was clear to me that Wilhelm did not want to get into a serious relationship. Eventually he confided in me that he had applied for a Rhodes scholarship to study for three years at Oxford, starting the next year. He felt it would be unfair to start a relationship if he was about to leave. We agreed to wait until December, when he was due to hear if he had been awarded the scholarship. We were also a bit worried about the fact that he was one of my tutors in philosophy.
In December 1985, to his delight, Wilhelm was awarded the prestigious Rhodes scholarship. Knowing how much this meant to him, I was happy for him and accompanied him to deliver the good news to his parents. Wilhelm’s parents lived in the Stellenbosch neighbourhood of Uniepark in a rambling family home dominated by large pictures and busts of HF Verwoerd. I had met his parents briefly before and liked his mother, Elise, in particular. She came from the small farming town of Sannieshof in the North West Province. A soft-spoken, very religious woman, she was (and remains) totally dedicated to her husband and family. Wilhelm’s father, Wilhelm senior, is the eldest son of Hendrik and Betsie Verwoerd. Until his retirement a few years ago he was professor in the Geology Department at the University of Stellenbosch. As the eldest son of the family he is very much the patriarch of the extended Verwoerd family and since his father’s assassination had taken on the role of protecting not only HF Verwoerd’s legacy, but also the ‘good’ name of the family.
Even though I was of course aware of the Verwoerds’ political background, I was still shocked when his father reacted with disappointment and disgust at Wilhelm’s proud announcement that he had won a Rhodes scholarship. Wilhelm senior made it clear that he did not want the Verwoerd name associated with the British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes. He also said Wilhelm would be corrupted by the liberal English attitudes at Oxford. I could see how this hurt Wilhelm. It was to be my first glimpse into how ideologically driven Wilhelm’s family was, and I did not like it at all.
Yet I liked Wilhelm – in fact, we were in love – and despite our earlier agreement, we started a serious relationship. A few months later, however, a revelation from Wilhelm nearly ended our relationship. One evening Wilhelm was very late for an appointment we had. When he finally arrived I asked where he had been, but his answers were vague and evasive. Under pressure from me he eventually ‘confessed’ that he had been at a Ruiterwag (junior Broederbond) meeting at Professor Tom Dreyer’s house. I was furious.
‘Are you a member?’ I wanted to know. Wilhelm said that he was. I exploded and bombarded him with angry questions and accusations. I could not understand how he could be part of a secret, Afrikaans, male-only organisation with such dubious political motives. I also made it clear that I could never be with anyone who belonged to the Ruiterwag or Broederbond. Even though he argued passionately with me on the night, I think Wilhelm had started to doubt the wisdom of belonging to the organisation even before our conversation. A few days later he resigned his membership.
In July 1986, Wilhelm left to start his studies abroad. He went first to Utrecht in Holland for three months, and then to Oxford to study politics, philosophy and economics for three years. Before he left, we agreed that we would get married at the end of 1987, when I had finished my first degree, if we were still together then. The period he spent abroad was traumatic for Wilhelm, especially his time in Holland. Not only was it his first trip outside South Africa, but he ended up in a house with ANC members and gay couples – all former South Africans – who were very hard on this ‘naive’ white Afrikaner who carried the Verwoerd surname. He wrote long letters to me daily and spoke on little cassette tapes that he sent me. The certainties of his youth were being undermined and it was clear that he was having a difficult time. He became confused and even depressed.
At the end of 1986, I decided to visit him in Oxford. We spent three weeks Inter-Railing through Europe. It was not my first trip abroad, but we were badly prepared for the extreme cold of the European winter. Things became even more challenging when Wilhelm lost all his money and his passport. Given that this was during the apartheid years, no one was very keen to help us and, as it was close to Christmas, the embassy officials just shrugged their shoulders. Yet we survived.
Back in England, we met a young South African in exile, Tshepiso Mashinini. Tshepiso’s brother Tsietsi had been one of the leaders in the 1976 Soweto uprisings. Tshepiso was a brilliant man and we talked for hours. He challenged our political views and told us about the other side of life in our country, which we had not known existed. He introduced us to other exiles, who did the same. For hours they talked about their living conditions in South Africa, the struggle to get an education, and the police harassment they endured. Some even showed us the scars they carried from being tortured by the security police. They were our age and had grown up in the same country as us, yet our lives were worlds apart.
Meeting Tshepiso had an enormous impact on me. I returned to South Africa a month later with my whole perception of reality changed. I looked at everything and everyone around me with new eyes – and with growing suspicion. I felt as if everyone in authority – the church, teachers, lecturers, and even my parents – had lied to me for years. I watched the TV news with disdain, thinking how none of it was the truth.
Back on campus, I started questioning and challenging many of the ideological and political statements the lecturers made. This resulted in furious exchanges between the lecturers, my classmates and me. I had been warned that there were one or two students in every year who were paid to feed information to the security police, but I could not have cared less. One day, I arrived home to find one of my lecturers having tea with my parents. I could see that my mum was irritated, and she told me the lecturer had come to warn them of my ‘revolutionary’ ideas, which he felt were not only dangerous but also anti-Christian. I eyed the professor furiously.
‘Isn’t that what they said of Jesus as well?’ I asked coldly.
Before he could answer, I left the room, but I heard the professor say: ‘There you have it! Need I say any more?’
Even though my parents must have been concerned, they did not say anything to me afterwards. They had always encouraged debate and free thinking, and the dinner table would often resemble a debating society. I gradually sought out more of the (very few) left-wing students on campus. Wilhelm,
