International DNA Day and the sad story of Sandra Laing
Who would have thought that amongst the numerous international commemorative days there is even one for DNA. It fell yesterday, April 25. National DNA Day was first celebrated in 2003 by proclamation of the US Congress marking the day in 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick published their findings on the double helix structure of DNA. Since then, the National Human Genome Research Institute has internationalised celebrations and in many countries the day is marked by seminars, workshops, lab tours, science cafes and other public engagements.
A recent photo of Sandra Laing now aged 70. Courtesy PARC
As Watson and Crick’s findings provided the foundation for a host of DNA applications in areas of forensics, profiling, paternity testing, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals and therapy, such a commemoration is fitting. Still, development of many applications had to wait another 30 to 35 years and for one person they came too late.
The story of Sandra Laing, born in 1955, is one of the most bizarre to come out of South Africa’s apartheid era. It highlights not only the extent of apartheid’s racism but its absurdity. If some of these DNA applications had been present during Sandra’s schooldays, she might have been spared the personal turmoil she underwent and undermined the vicious system that was its cause.
The 1977 BBC documentary ‘In Search of Sandra Laing’ was the first to highlight her story. Sandra was born to conservative white Afrikaner parents Sannie and Abraham Laing. Sandra along with her two brothers attended South Africa’s Dutch reformed church and were raised in its theology that as white people they were superior to people of colour.
Her early childhood was happy with Sandra appearing to be playful and outgoing. The BBC documentary brings this out with black and white film reel of touching family moments.
The problems surfaced when at the age of seven Sandra entered South Africa’s segregated education system. Sandra’s skin was darker than that of her parents and siblings. Her hair was tight and curly. She had the physiognomy of a person of African ancestry. This had not caused her problems before but students at her boarding school told her she was not white and asked what she was doing there. Sandra says she hit some of the children that harassed her. Some accounts suggest that teachers looked away when she was called ‘kaffir.’ She was also called ‘blackie’ and frizz head’ and her fellow pupils refused to drink from the water fountain she used.
Sandra was a genetic throwback scientifically termed a polygenic inheritance. Her African genetic characteristics had been dormant and probably passed on for generations even centuries. Such phenomena were not unknown but if there was ever ‘a wrong place at the wrong time’ for this, it was in apartheid South Africa.
In apartheid South Africa, race classification took place at birth. But it could be changed and the guiding principles were appearance and acceptance. Parents at Sandra’s school petitioned to have her expelled. Her case was referred to Home Affairs which classified her as coloured and then the provincial administrator authorized her expulsion. The school principal summoned Sandra and told her to pack her bag. When asked why, he just said she could not attend the school anymore. Two policeman escorted Sandra back to her stunned and distressed parents. Her younger brother at the same school whose appearance was accepted was allowed to remain.
Sandra’s father was determined to fight this outcome. He could go to court or to the Race Classification Appeals Board. He chose the former as the Appeals Board used peculiar pseudo-scientific tests. Particularly the notorious pencil test where a pencil was placed in the appellant’s hair and they were asked to lean forward. If the pencil fell, the appellant was white and if it didn’t, the person was deemed black. Sandra’s father initiated a determined fight up to the Supreme Court but lost.
The government then changed the law. If your parents were white, you were white. Sandra parents were delighted. Sandra was white again.
But the damage had been done. Sandra was not accepted back into a white public school. The local community which shunned Sandra and even ostracized her at church after classification as coloured, continued to do so even after her reclassification as white.
One interpretation of Sandra’s appearance was her mother’s infidelity. To disprove that Sandra father underwent blood typing tests for paternity. In the absence of DNA paternity testing, as millions of people shared the same blood types, the test merely confirmed that there was no incompatibility. The result was therefore inconclusive.
Sandra was finally accepted into a Roman Catholic convent school. The nuns were good to her but being much older than others in the class she did not entirely fit in. Having experienced rejection by white society most of her friends were either coloured or black. At the age of 16, she eloped with her vegetable vendor black boyfriend Petrus Zwane. This was to avoid an irate father who threatened to shoot him if he visited her. They were arrested she believes on the instigation of her father. Sandra was imprisoned for two months at a correctional facility and pressured to go home. She remained firm so was allowed go and live with Petrus and his family.
The 1977 BBC documentary catches up with Sandra finding her through the African grapevine. The contrast is shown. The bubbly ‘white’ child at the outset is now filmed living with her husband and two children in a tin roofed shack in an impoverished black ‘homeland’.
Life continued to be difficult. Her father refused to sign the papers allowing her to become coloured so she had no status and had to find odd jobs to survive. After the death of her third child, Petrus turned to drink and became abusive. She was compelled to leave him and at one stage gave up her children to government care due to poverty. Her father never met with her in his lifetime. She occasionally met secretly with her mother, and reunited with her after a long period just before her death. Although she found happiness in a new marriage with a Sotho speaking man Johannes Motlung, her brothers refused to have anything to do with her. They say they prefer to leave the past alone.
With articles, documentaries and an award-winning 2008 movie called ‘Skin’, Sandra’s story has made waves. Would then the presence of DNA science have changed its narrative? Undeniably, expelling Sandra from school by overturning a 99.9% accurate DNA paternity test might have been more difficult. But as the1977 BBC documentary conveys, appearance was crucial and ingrained. A teacher at Sandra’s school is shown guiding a class on differences:
“What does our skin look like? What colour is it? A light skin… “And now the black people…their hair is crinkly. And their noses are? Flat. What are their mouths like? Their lips? Thick lips.”
Since Sandra’s school rejected her appearance, the DNA paternity test may not have overridden it. Yet it would have silenced rumours of her mother’s infidelity which may have facilitated Sandra’s societal acceptance when the government subsequently established that if your parents were white, you were white.
The game changer though would have been DNA profiling. Recent studies show that 98.7% of white Afrikaners have some level of non-European DNA. While this Asian and African DNA is estimated to average around 4.7% to 5.5% in white Afrikaners, some of them have over 10%.
Racial purity, the basis of the system that subjected Sandra Laing to vicious discrimination, is now shown to be something of a myth. A valuable lesson to those who advocate similar notions. DNA profiling may well provide them with a shocking surprise!
(The writer has served as High Commissioner to South Africa)
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