Kathie

Two sisters: one dark, one fair – torn apart by the colour of their skin. Kathie was born as dark as her Cape Coloured father. This was a social disaster in the eyes of her mother and near-white grandmother, who rejoice when Kathie’s new baby sister Stella is fair skinned. Nothing is going to stop them propelling Stella into Cape Town’s privileged white world. Kathie adores her little sister, but only when Stella is sent to a white school does Kathie learn, with a terrible sense of shock, that she is ‘different’ from her sister. While Stella strives to join the white world, Kathie throws herself into her studies, though she never abandons her sister, whose painfully convoluted life is finally intertwined with her own in a most astonishing way. When Kathie meets Paul Mangena, a young black lawyer from the Eastern Province, her life changes. Drawn into a world of enlightenment, she shares Paul’s vision of a South Africa where all people can live as equals. Though sustained by their hope, their joy and their intense love for each other, their path is never smooth. Cruelly opposed by the unyielding forces of the times, Kathie remains undaunted. Even as the final cataclysmic event overwhelms her, she declares, ‘The future is ours!’ The more you read this passionate novel, the more you will find within it.