The Verwoerd who Toyi-Toyied. Melanie Verwoerd
had too much to drink and he screamed at me. He raged about what a failure I was and would always be. He assured me over and over that I would never succeed at anything I did. Instead of seeing this as drunken meanness stemming from his own sense of failure, I desperately tried to convince him otherwise. At some point he threw down the phone, after which I went to find my mum. I rarely involved her in my troubles with my dad, but it had become too much for me. She was furious, and I overheard her calling my father, and then his sister, to ensure that he would leave me alone in future.
This awful conversation at the end of an awful day was the last time I spoke to him. I have no doubt that the legal signing-off was the right thing to do for me to have some normality in my life. Yet it left me with deep emotional scars for a long time, particularly when it came to developing trusting relationships, especially with men. I also became more driven to be successful. I had always worked hard, and these increased efforts brought further results, but at a high emotional and physical price.
In 1992, I got a call from my dad’s wife saying that he had died suddenly from cancer. I was too far pregnant with my second baby, Wian, to attend the funeral. Even though I did not shed a tear, I will forever regret that I did not have a relationship with him and that he never saw my children or experienced my entering parliament. Irrespective of all the pain he had caused me, he was still my dad.
3
Wilhelm and I were married on 29 December 1987. We rented a beautiful little Presbyterian church and invited about a hundred guests. By now, we had many friends from across the racial spectrum. Wilhelm’s mother did the flowers, and we used Wilhelm’s father’s antique German DKW as the wedding car. Wilhelm had arrived only a few days earlier from Oxford, so I made almost all the arrangements on my own.
Two days before the wedding, a crisis erupted. We had asked Anton van Niekerk, one of our philosophy professors who was also a theologian, to lead the service, but since he was no longer a practising minister, he could not conduct the legal part of the ceremony. So we asked a friend, Sydney Davis, a minister in the nearby coloured area, to officiate. He said he was honoured, and to our delight agreed. When Wilhelm’s father found out that a ‘coloured man’ was to be part of a Verwoerd wedding, he exploded. He said that he would not attend, and would not allow Wilhelm’s mother to attend either. I was livid! I felt that, out of principle, we should not cave in. Yet, for his mother’s sake, Wilhelm convinced me otherwise. Sydney immediately understood, and graciously still came to the wedding. It was an early-morning wedding, and afterwards we had tea for the guests on a veranda on the Neethlingshof wine farm. It was a glorious summer day and thankfully everything went smoothly.
After the wedding, we moved into a flat the local council provided for low-income white families – for which we qualified, being students with almost no income. We were due to return to Oxford, but Wilhelm had agreed to take a break for a year and do some part-time teaching, so that I could complete my Honours degree in philosophy. (I had graduated a few days before the wedding.) Even though a recent synod of the DRC church had finally agreed to the ordination of women, I had no interest any more in going to the seminary school to study for another three years. I was deeply disillusioned with the church on political and gender grounds. I had lost all respect for its leaders and was seriously questioning my faith. Instead of taking the safer route of studying for a postgraduate degree in clinical psychology, which I had also considered, I decided to follow my heart and study philosophy.
In between studies, Wilhelm and I were settling into married life. In the middle of the year, Wilhelm was invited to join a group on a clandestine trip to meet the ANC in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Similar trips had previously resulted in the participants’ passports being withdrawn and them being held up to public ridicule, so the trip was to happen quietly. Originally I was also going, but then it was decided that women could not attend. When I asked why, I was told that they were not sure what living conditions would be like, and that women might not cope. I felt patronised and insulted, and vowed never to be excluded from political discussions again.
On his return, Wilhelm became increasingly withdrawn, and the arguments with his family increased. Even though our political activities were very limited at this stage, it became apparent that the government was aware of us. In 1987 Wilhelm and I dropped Wilhelm’s grandmother, Betsie, at the airport in Cape Town. As the wife of a previous prime minister, she was entitled to use the VIP lounge for life. While we were waiting for her flight to depart, the door of the lounge opened and FW de Klerk, who was at the time the minister of National Education and Planning, walked in with a few staff members. He spotted Ouma Betsie and came over to greet her. She in turn introduced us to De Klerk. His eyes narrowed slightly when he heard our names.
‘Yeees,’ he said with a sigh, looking at us knowingly. ‘We know about these two.’ Then he leaned forward and said in a threatening tone: ‘Be careful, you two, very careful!’ He turned and left to board his plane before we could ask any questions.
We returned to Oxford at the end of 1988, after I had graduated with an Honours degree in philosophy. I had enrolled for a Masters in philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch, and was planning to do the research for my thesis while at Oxford with Wilhelm. My thesis was on the work of various feminist theologians who questioned how the masculine language used for God was impacting on society and patriarchal structures. I quickly discovered that Oxford was not the best place to do work on feminist theology.
Wilhelm found Oxford a lonely and challenging place. Not being under the same pressure academically, I loved it. The first apartment we were assigned was dark and dreary, but when we subsequently moved to a much brighter ground-floor apartment close to University Park, I was much happier. We had very little money, since we were both living on the Rhodes scholarship. Eventually I took a job delivering newspapers to bring in a bit more cash. I bought anything we needed second-hand from Oxfam or at the university club, where foreign students would sell their belongings when they left Oxford. I would cycle into the city centre daily to have lunch or dinner with Wilhelm at Corpus Christi College. I loved the big old dining hall, with its long tables and benches. Sometimes we were invited to high table, which meant sitting at the top table and getting much better food. Afterwards we would have coffee in the senior common room; it was all very civilised.
On my first day in the common room, I met a lovely Scottish man. ‘Hello! I’m Eddie McKenzie,’ he said in a strong Scottish accent.
I introduced myself, then asked what he was doing at Oxford.
‘Oh, I kill frogs,’ he responded.
‘Why?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Because I like it!’ Eddie said without the slightest tone of irony. ‘Actually, I prefer South African bullfrogs. They croak less when you kill them.’
Slightly perturbed, I told Wilhelm about the conversation. He just laughed and told me that Eddie was doing a doctorate on genetics in frogs.
We made many good friends from around the world, such as Todd Breyfogle from the United States and Graeme McLean from Australia, who would later become godfathers to our children. Together we would play croquet and spend long hours in the pub (even though I never drank alcohol). During the summer, we spent leisurely afternoons punting on the river; in the evenings, we would frequently go to evensong in Christ Church College.
During our first year at Oxford, Wilhelm and I made two big trips. First, we decided to backpack and camp through Israel. I had always wanted to see the holy sites. It was an extraordinary three weeks during which Wilhelm and I were very close. I will never forget waking up on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, watching the sunrise through our open tent flaps. In between visits to the holy sites, we made time to float in the Red Sea and snorkel in Eilat. Although it was a magical time, we were disturbed by the political tensions in the country. Even coming from South Africa and its succession of states of emergency, we found the military presence in Israel and the animosity between Palestinians and Jews unsettling. It was clear that peaceful co-existence between the two communities was very far away.
In retrospect, Wilhelm and I seem to have been drawn to conflict areas. Having seen Israel, we decided to visit Ireland. In the weeks before we left, I was amazed to discover how few British people – and in particular