Thank “God” for My Parents

I grew up in the heyday of Apartheid South Africa. I remember having to attend school assemblies and listen to hymns and bible readings which seemed to have no relevance, and attending Religious Instruction classes – aka church at school – and being mystified by why we were expected to know about these old stories from a tribe of Semitic people far, far away, which were not even from Africa. 

I remember the insistence on nationalism, saluting the flag, the racism, all predicated on a “Christian” world view of the superiority of the white man. I remember being told that “black” people were the sons of Ham, the hewers of wood and drawers of water. I remember being told I was going to “veld skool” (field school), a brainwashing exercise where we apparently would learn to be prepared for military eventualities (the “swart gevaar” or “black danger”) and how we’d have to watch out for rock music… apparently there were satanic messages hidden in it which could be revealed by playing LP’s backwards. 

Fortunately for me, my parents never inflicted religion on me. I went to probably two weddings and two funerals while I was at school – that was it. I remember the inception of the “born again Christian” movement; suddenly, in about 1987, there were a lot of people at my school pushing Christianity and asking if I’d been “born again”. I never knew why. 

Then I remember how in 1985 I asked my science teacher about evolution. I’d seen it in an encyclopaedia from the UK. She said it was a lie and that God had made life. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’d never realised, till then, what was going on. But at that point it became clear. 

In 1993 I studied a course in which we learnt about the 1967 “Beleid” or Christian National Education Policy, which was the foundational law behind all the experiences I listed above. It now made sense. I now knew that it was in fact a conspiracy, an actual design, to try brain wash us. I was very angry. I still am.