However, I was feeling confused. How could I be attracted to another man when I had just got engaged? How could I set off on my own to South Africa and enjoy every second of my travels? How could I love being in a different city, experiencing new sights, hankering after doing more of the same, preferably in Europe? How could I allow myself to live in a country which was heading more and more towards Apartheid, as practised in South Africa, where the races were segregated? Could I continue to condone a system which designated benches in parks and buses on the roads as being “For Whites Only”? How could I even travel by train in luxury, while anyone of colour was obliged to travel Third Class, where they were seated on wooden benches, and had none of the comfort I had with my First Class railway ticket, which my father was allocated at no cost, a perk of working for Rhodesia Railways? It just wasn’t right. What was I going to do? I loved my fiancé but marrying him meant I was agreeing to his very Rhodesian way of life. Not marrying him meant I had to break off my engagement, which would be agonizing, and cause a lot of fuss amongst friends and family, not to mention in the local white population as a whole, since it was so small. Did I want to do this, when we had just had an engagement party and were marrying in less than three months’ time? No, I didn’t, but what was I going to do? I was in a turmoil of conflicting emotions.
I didn’t really have time to think about such things, though, as I came back to Salisbury and I asked a fellow teacher for a ride back to Marandellas. So back to school I went, miles from my fiancé who was in Salisbury or in the bush somewhere. Maybe I would settle down again, I thought, burying myself in my usual routine and my heavy workload of classes.
I knew that I needed to concentrate on getting my students ready for their external examinations, all of which were marked in Britain by the board of the General Certificate of Education. My 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds took internal examinations that I devised and graded. However, the 16-year-olds were about to take their O (Ordinary)-Level Examinations. They could then leave school, go to work or to an agricultural college somewhere (there was certainly nothing like a college in Marandellas or anywhere nearby, that I knew of), or else they could continue for one more year to take their M (Matriculation)-Level Examinations. If they passed, these 17- and 18-year-olds would be heading to university in South Africa, not to the University College of Rhodesia (350 students only), which multi-racial institution was affiliated to the University of London, England. I had attended the University College, because I appreciated its very high British standards and I wanted to study French, but most Whites declined the College, far preferring the huge Whites-only universities in South Africa. Furthermore, in order to attend a British institution, students required yet one more year of studying and of examinations after Matriculation. They would have to pass their A-(Advanced) Level. This entailed relocating to a boarding school in Salisbury, since the school in Marandellas did not offer A-Level.
So my students opted for South Africa, as did most Whites in Rhodesia, Zambia and Malawi seeking a university education. There, Afrikaans and English were widely spoken, but the universities were predominantly for Whites only. Apartheid was enforced throughout the country. On their huge farms, with their segregated African workers, and in their homes, where Africans were servants and lived in small huts away from the farmhouse, this was what these young men and women were used to. Blacks and Coloureds were considered inferior races, so why would the Whites want to go to a multiracial institution? No way! They were interested in maintaining the status quo, where they themselves were the superior race and had all the benefits that came with it. I could imagine that four years later, they would return to their homeland, proud of their university degrees, but still knowing very little about the ways of the world at large.
