The rainbow nation still blighted by a colour bar
Sydney Morning Herald , January 22, 2002. Apartheid lives on in the mindsets of South Africans especially in those of the coloureds, observes Toni Hassan. I WAS born in South Africa as a so-called "coloured" person of mixed race, and migrated with my family to Australia in 1978. I was six. I have been back twice: first in 1994 when South Africa said "Yes!" to an amazing transition led by the country's first black leader, the patron saint Nelson Mandela. I returned again recently to see what real change there has been. Among my mob the coloured people there are resignation and despair. There is a curse on coloured people, they say. As my uncle said over breakfast, "During the bad old days of apartheid, the coloureds were too black to get jobs and now they are too white to get what few jobs are left after the good ones have been given to blacks."