Janette, Human. Auckland, NZ.

Apartheid

The implementation of apartheid based on vacation “status” effected every aspect of my life.

Some long time friends turned to me with hatred. Our friendships were permanently destroyed. A social ill was introduced into New Zealand society and into my life, one that will perhaps never be healed.

It first I could not believe that in New Zealand I would ever experience apartheid.

Was this really happening? My ground for understanding reality was shaking. I began to ask myself, was this, perhaps intentional?

The government was subtly encouraging people through its humongous add campaigns and relentless propoganda, to take restrictions far further than was actually legislated. Councils implemented wide reaching apartheid controls on entry to the facilities such as libraries and public facilities that we funded and built for all to use.

I was shut out of my library from which I am perhaps one of the most regular borrowers. I was ignored and shamed and left to stand outside while others went in.

I thought about the deep south in the 1950s where there were the blacks only bus queues, and seats for whites on busses that black passengers were forced to give up. And where Rosa Parks took a stand by refusing to give up her seat and was delivered into police custody for so doing. And I saw NEW ZEALAND WALK THE SAME PATH.

Life will never be the same. I will never be the same.