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South African couple will share apartheid experiences

Date 4/29/2004 12:00 AM | Topic: News

Their relationship is a unique one. She is a white woman and he is a black man, and while miscegenation laws are long gone in the United States, the couple met in South Africa during the time of the apartheid government where relationships between black and white people were marked with confrontation and violence for over 40 years.

"Living History: A Conversation with South Africans Reggie September and Melissa Steyn," will be at Luther College on Sunday, May 2, at 7 p.m.

September and Steyn, two important fighters of the oppressive South African apartheid government, will be discussing their lives in South Africa under the apartheid government.

September will focus on his life experiences as a political activist during the South African anti-apartheid movement. Steyn will talk about her life and writing regarding the white experience in South Africa.

Steyn is speaking at a conference on white privilege at Central College, in Pella, Iowa, on Saturday, May 1. Having them also come to Luther made it more cost effective because the two schools split the cost of bringing them to Iowa.

Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies Martin Klammer will be the moderator of the event.

"This event offers us a unique opportunity to hear first-hand from someone who lived most of his life in the struggle to bring about change from the system of apartheid where only whites had political rights to the nonracial democracy in South Africa today," Klammer said.

September has lived an exceptional life as an activist who was arrested with Nelson Mandela, activist and former president of South Africa, along with 156 other people in December of 1956.

The activists were charged with "high treason and a countryside conspiracy to use violence to overthrow the present government and replace it with a communist state." He was imprisoned for four and a half years before he and the rest of the defendants were discharged.

In the 1950's, September started the South African Coloured People's Congress and became the general secretary.

September was also a chief representative of the African National Congress for Western Europe in London, where he had been living in exile until 1990 when he went back to South Africa.

As the daughter of a former National Party leader in South Africa's white government, Steyn defied her father and was in vocal opposition to apartheid.

Steyn has done extensive research on white people's lives within the apartheid.

She authored a book, "Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used To Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa" (SUNY Press, 2001). Her research includes interviews with over 50 white South Africans and their roles in the changing society.

The couple met and was married in 2000. September is thirty years Steyn's senior. Mandela attended their wedding reception.

Klammer said, "Their marriage would have been illegal fifteen years ago.

"Their marriage is very symbolic of the possibilities of the new South Africa."

April 27, 2004, marked the 10-year anniversary of the New South Africa.

Klammer said, "This event gives us the opportunity to think about the changes in South Africa and that it is only 10 years old and a non-racial democracy."

The talk will be held in Room 102 of the F.W. Olin Building.

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Kathryn Hobson

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