Of Black alumni and other apartheid memories

The recent invitation to the launch of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Black Alumni Association, has me thinking about my time at UCT in the early 1980s. 

My fondest memory of my grandfather, who was  a delivery truck driver, was of him coming home, his pockets jingling with coins, which were to be deposited into the little money box in his cupboard for my "education". By the time I was ready for university, he had saved enough to pay for the first year of tuition. Being accepted at UCT engendered mixed emotions in me. I was the only person in my class at school to be accepted at UCT, (not many students from my year did in fact go to university) and I was proud to be the first person in my family to make it to university. But this was tempered by the humiliation of having to apply to the Department of Coloured Affairs for a permit to attend a "white" university. I was granted permission on the basis that the university for "coloured people" did not offer the course I wished to study. 

To say that attending UCT was a culture shock, is putting it mildly. In addition, I was based on medical campus which was known to be more conservative than the main campus.  Out of a class of 25, there were three of us who were "not white" and only two people who had blazed the way before us, as the first "non-white" occupational therapists to graduate from UCT. The only "white" people I knew were the Irish nuns at my school and one or two teachers who had passed through. So there we were, like flies in a jug of milk!

I think the general feeling among "black" students was that we should do what we came to do (be educated) but not engage in the "normal" life of university since our acceptance there was not normal. For example, we were discouraged from using the university cafeteria since we weren't generally able to eat in whatever restaurants we wanted to. We were also discouraged from participating in sport since how could we play normal sport in an abnormal society?

I cannot say that I experienced any overt racism in my class - we were a small department and generally got on well with each other. There were many parties at student's houses which, in itself, was almost schizophrenia-inducing since it was by no means normal for me to be socialising with "white" people. There was one girl who I became quite friendly with and I spent a lot of time at her house which, ironically, is about 5 minutes from where we now live, in a previously-"white" neighbourhood. However, I was shattered when she and her family  returned from their holiday in the US and reported that their American family was so impressed that their daughter had "a little coloured friend". Those words were like a slap in the face, like I was some kind of novelty. 

Going about the day to day life of becoming an occupational therapist was also fraught with the intricacies of apartheid SA. When it came to clinical practice in the hospitals, we were not allowed to treat "white" patients. In my third year I was posted to a very difficult placing in a psychiatric hospital which I struggled with - however, I could not be placed in the relatively easier ward that my fellow students were going to in the general hospital, since the patients there were "white". 

In spite of these obstacles, I graduated and was offered a job at the hospital that I dreamed of working at. I spent almost fifteen years loving what I was doing as an occupational therapist. I have two friends from university who have travelled the paths of studying, working, marriage, motherhood and more over the years with me. Both of them are still working as occupational therapists, one in the US and the other here in SA. From time to time I bump into other alumni and it is always good to catch up. 

I do believe, though, that my time at university could have been so much more, and I could have embraced much more of what such a prestigious university had to offer, if it were not for the times we were living in. I'm not sure that I want to be part of the Black Alumni Association. I'm not sure what it is hoping to address - a support for all of us who have bitter-sweet memories of our time at UCT? Perhaps there are some "white" alumni who would also like to be a part of that healing?