A few months after the first man landed on the moon in 1969, New West resident Una Bruhns landed in Canada.
For Bruhns, it was a giant leap.
Born and raised in South Africa during the racial segregation era that began in 1948, landing in North Vancouver meant freedom to study, to go to the movies, to visit the beach — all of which were off limits for a non-White person in South Africa at the time.
Finally, Bruhns no longer had to live in fear, she said.
About a decade ago, she started penning the story of her past life — episodes of violence, discrimination, courage and love — into a memoir that she titled Apartheid.
Bruhns finished writing the book in November 2022.
“It was a heavy load off my back,” she said.
“I decided to write this book because other people in South Africa today don’t know the facts (about apartheid). I think that it's a good thing for them to know the past history.”
Bruhns recollects the dark days of discrimination in an interview with the Record. Here are some excerpts from the chat:
What was it like growing up in South Africa in the 1950s?
Until I was nine years old, we grew up in a multicultural setting and everything was fine. We all got along.
My (maternal) grandparents were born on the island of St. Helena — that's the island where Napoleon (Bonaparte, French military leader) was exiled. It's one of the most remote islands in the world. They came to Cape Town, South Africa, along with the people they worked with. My dad was of Scottish descent. Everyone intermingled.
And then apartheid came into power around 1950 and everything changed.
They segregated people according to the colour of their skin into six different categories. Since people had mixed marriages before this, the kids were all different colours — some were tan and others were a little darker.
How did that impact your life?
They moved us from where we lived to another suburb and classified us as coloured because they didn't really know what we were.
We (Bruhns and her five siblings) were still young. We didn't know what the heck was going on with this colour thing until I was 16.
Now, the funny thing you should know is they did the "pencil test" to segregate us.
They would come around and stick a pencil in your hair. If the pencil fell out, you were coloured. If the pencil stayed in, you were Black. So, you can imagine all the families that were torn apart.
The Blacks got the worst of it. They stopped them from being educated; they could only study up to a certain standard. And then, they had to work as servants or gardeners.
There were many restrictions imposed on all those who were coloured, Blacks, Indians, Muslims, etc. No one could go to the beach if they were not White. We could not eat in a restaurant. The Blacks had to go through the back door, and they couldn't walk on the sidewalk if there was a White person on — they had to step aside.
The schools and the buses were segregated. All the seating on the roads were for Whites only.
There was a lot of discrimination.
All our friends were scattered. We lost touch with most of them until we were older. I was about 18 when I discovered where everybody that I knew before was.
What did you do once you finished school?
I had to go to work to help my parents because they didn't earn much. I worked in a garment factory. We had to clock in at 7:30 a.m. and we couldn't use the washrooms until a bell rang. Everybody could go to the washroom only then. Sometimes, we were not able to use the washroom because the time was up.
One day, I got so fed up that I decided to walk to the washroom when everybody got back to their machines. The foreman outed me and said, "Where the hell do you think you're going?" I said, "Listen, my body is not operated by a bell. I am going to the washroom now, sir." The two of us had this shouting match. And I said to him, "You can just shove that paycheque. I'm not working like an animal."
Of course, they fired my mother, my sister and me.
The book’s description talks about you falling in love with a German immigrant. What challenges did that bring forth?
Yes, I fell in love with a German man.
I got married at a young age. So I found him after my divorce (he had immigrated to South Africa for work).
I met him at a hairdresser’s. He had come to drop somebody off there; that’s when he saw me. At that time, my hair was quite long, and he wanted to know "Who’s the girl with the long hair?" Then, he wanted to take me for coffee. I remember I had said to him, "You’ll end up in prison." I had an Italian friend who was beaten up by the police so badly for disobeying the Immorality Act that he lost sight in one of his eyes.
The Immorality Act forbid any other race to mix with the Whites.
But being me, I fell in love with the German. So, we had this love affair, and the police were after us for five years. They chased me, they chased him. We were in and out of police vans.
Don’t forget that I was married before... They found out that I had a son and they tried to say that it was the German guy’s son. That way, they could arrest us and send us to prison.
There was a lot of running back and forth, and escaping them.
Once when he (the German guy) picked me up in the car, the police came out of hiding from the bush and hit the car with a bayonet. But we took off; we kind of dodged the police and the law.
Finally, he was able to immigrate to Canada, after which he sponsored me. But my son couldn't get out as his father wouldn't let him go. I left and came to Canada, and I was here for two years before the arrangements were made with lawyers for me to get his sole custody.
How did life change after moving to Canada?
I landed in October 1969, and got married the next month. Because my husband was a tradesman, he got a job right away.
Everything was different here. I could do what I wanted. I could study what I wanted.
I was like a sponge. I wanted to learn everything. My life was wide open. I took courses at BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology), I went into real estate, I became a nurse... and now, I am an author.
What was the most challenging part about writing your story?
The emotional part of it. It brought up a lot of memories.
I remember thinking how all the rest of my family were not as fortunate as I was. My nieces and nephews couldn't do what I could do — like study whatever they wanted. It was really sad.
Did you ever go back to Johannesburg?
I only went back after Nelson Mandela (anti-apartheid activist who was elected as the first president of South Africa in 1994) came into power. That was about 13 or 14 years after I moved to Canada. So I didn't see my family that whole time.
I was amazed at how things had changed. Before, they (the Whites) didn't want to eat with the Blacks or the coloured people.
And now, they were all eating in an Indian restaurant having a good time.
Una Bruhn's memoir Apartheid is available to be purchased on Friesen Press and Amazon.ca
