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10 year-old Sandra is distinctly African looking, though light-skinned. Her parents are shopkeepers in a remote area of the Eastern Transvaal: white Afrikaners who, despite Sandra’s mixed-race appearance, have lovingly brought her up as their ‘white’ little girl. They send her to the local boarding school, where her brother has gone before her. Yet other parents, teachers and children object to Sandra’s ‘African’ features, and she is made painfully aware of being different. The school principal soon has her examined by government officials, reclassified as ‘coloured’, and expelled. Sandra’s parents are shocked and horrified. Her father Abraham fights all the way to the Supreme Court to get her classified white again. Despite signing affidavits confirming that he and his wife are Sandra’s parents, and creating a media furore, Abraham loses the case. But international pressure forces the laws to change in South Africa — and Sandra is officially reclassified white. Sandra persuades Petrus to elope with her to Swaziland — but Abraham alerts the police, has them arrested and put in prison (as a ‘white’ woman, let alone a minor, Sandra is breaking the law by living with a black man). She is eventually released, but refuses to go home with her parents, as decreed by the magistrate, choosing to live with Petrus instead. Incensed, her father severs all ties with her, and insists Sannie and Sandra’s two brothers do likewise.
 Abraham Laing 1967
Bravely, she leaves Petrus, packing up their two children and little else — but she has nowhere to go: her family has disappeared without trace, and she is destitute. Sandra pulls her life together, finding work in Johannesburg. Not long after the first free elections in 1994, she hears of her father’s death, and becomes obsessed with the idea of reuniting with her mother. She goes back to the bureaucratic institutions that tortured her as a child and finally tracks her mother down, in a nursing home outside Pretoria. Sannie has had three strokes and is very frail. She longs to reach out to her daughter but is also afraid of rejection, believing she has failed her as a mother. Sandra’s gentle persuasion, and South Africa’s legacy to the world — the power or forgiveness — binds the women together and leads to a heartfelt reconciliation. |
Yet Sandra knows she will never belong in a white world, as defined by apartheid. At 17, she falls in love with Petrus — a black vegetable seller. It is a forbidden passion and her father (Abraham) threatens to shoot Petrus and disown Sandra. Her mother (Sannie) also disapproves of the relationship, but is torn between her husband’s rage and her daughter’s predicament. 
Sannie and Sandra Laing
Now Sandra must live as a black person in South Africa for the first time — with no running water, electricity or sanitation — and the loss of all privileges: social, educational and financial. Yet she feels loved and accepted, and she and Petrus have two children. Nevertheless, she still misses her ‘white’ family, and Petrus feels threatened by that attachment. In the midst of all this, Petrus and Sandra are forcibly removed from their village, when the government re-zones it a ‘whites only area’ after discovering coal there. Having lost his home and his livelihood, Petrus sinks into alcoholism and becomes physically abusive towards Sandra.
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