Ayesha Hoorzook interviewed by Matthew Millar October 8, 2006 Johannesburg, South Africa.
"When he was six, which school was going to take him?" [3:39]
There were concrete benefits to bring classified in a "higher" racial group, so many people went before Racial Classification Boards to try to be reclassified. Sometimes children of the same couple were not classified as the same race, causing difficulties for the family.
Ms. Hoorzook grew up in Johannesburg in a community that was later declared as a white area, so her Indian family had to move. She experienced the irrationality and difficulties of racial classification; marrying a man from Cape Town, their first child was classified as Indian and their second child as Cape Malay. It took half a year to have the second child reclassified so he could go to school with his sibling in the community where they lived. Hoorzook became a history teacher in order to teach students about their country’s past. She also serves as a guide in the Apartheid Museum.
