Her Story: Sandra Laing
The cruel trick of fate that saw a dark-skinned girl born to white parents in apartheid South Africa
On the 26th of November 1955, Abraham and Susanna Laing were blessed with a beautiful baby girl whom they named her Susanna like her mother and her grandmother before her. While mama went by Sannie, their newborn daughter would be known as Sandra.
Her birth, although a joyous occasion to be sure, was also greeted with a small measure of disquiet because as only the bravest of their friends was willing to point out, Sandra appeared to have darker skin than the rest of her family. “She will get lighter the older she gets,” her parents said, “With time, we’re sure she will look just like her big brother Adriaan.” But Sandra didn’t get lighter with age and the disquiet that surrounded her birth grew to a murmur as she got older and was a full on shout of disapproval by the time she was ten years old.
It would have been one thing if Abraham and Susanna, both Caucasian, had simply had a child who didn’t quite look like either one of them or their family members going back generations, but this was apartheid South Africa where skin color meant a while lot more than the possibility of a straying spouse.
