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There are many novels about the South African apartheid era. The politics, the tragedies, terror attacks, losses, the fear, the loves, the absurdity of the laws of separation.
Laws and lifestyles that, 30 years later, we are still paying for and living with. The classification by colour also led to families being split. If one person had a lighter skin, they could be re-classified and live a privileged white life, sometimes secretly visiting their families, often never having contact with them again. Cruel, heartbreaking. Love across the colour line was strictly forbidden, pursued and vilified, the punishments meted out by police in horrific ways. Freedom is hard won, as we so well know. So, do we need another story?
My personal opinion is – yes. Space Between the Stars by Angela Miller-Rothbart has a definite place on the shelves of memory. To take a phrase that underlines the Holocaust stories, ‘Lest we forget’ – in healing, the stories need to be told. And a ‘Born Free’ generation needs to understand the cost of freedom. By continuing to tell those stories we hold that history, and are able to look to a future that is free from discrimination.
Rothbart’s personal background was of growing up in Paarl, sheltered and privileged. She knew the stories of certain families on their farm and acknowledges the heroines of those stories, poignantly closing with “In memory of Margie Fortuin”. She has crafted this novel around the people she knew.
When the struggle was at its zenith, in the turbulent years of the 70s and 80s, we meet Miemie and Karel Apollos. Workers on the wine farm Tweefontein, they are good, hardworking people. Passively accepting of the apartheid laws, Miemie works at the main house and Karel as foreman on the farm. They have a special relationship with the farm owners. But their daughter Elizabeth is feisty, curious, restless, as so many of the younger Coloured community were. Determined to fight the oppressive apartheid laws, when she meets the British-born activist Robert Booth at a protest march, they fall into a ‘forbidden love ‘across the colour line’. Marked by the Secret Police, fleeing South Africa, they leave behind their child, Emmy. The child with blue eyes and blond hair, the child who looks different from the other kids on the farm, lives with her grandparents in a farmworkers’ cottage, goes to a ‘white’ school, and is protected by owners Freda and Dirk. The ‘witkind’ – an insult in a Coloured community.
Her grandparents are her all, her mother a vague memory. The white friends of her mother, ever present in her life, forming strong bonds of respect and love. Emmy’s life straddles two worlds. When Elizabeth finally returns in 1993, Emmy is a teenager – there is turmoil. Questions, memories, a tough story that many children of exiles can relate to – a reminder for the future.
Rothbart presents a credible story – the Jewish characters, the friends that support the exiled, the subterfuge that confounded the police, the all-too-tragic journey of Robert and Elizabeth.
At times I found the language a little flowery – I would have preferred a crisper narrative. But it is an easy and authentic read and has a deserved place. ●
This is Angela Miller-Rothbart’s second novel. Born and raised in Paarl, she is an entrepreneur, businesswoman, advanced Toastmaster and voice-over artist, as well as a writer. She is the mother of two daughters and has a grandson. She lives in Sea Point with her husband Henry and is well known in the Cape Town Jewish community.
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