I spent my whole life being afraid of Black men, and I am proud to say that I'm not afraid anymore. I have one in my life, and we absolutely love each other. As an Afrikaner woman born and raised in the region of Gauteng, Republic of South Africa, knee-jerk fear of Black males is what was expected of me. At least that's how things were in the old days.
My name is Darlene Van Friesen, and I am a woman with a story to tell. The tale of how I found love, in the last place I thought to look for it. Under the most unusual of circumstances. Please come on this journey with me, dear reader. It's definitely one for the ages. I first saw the light of day on November 9, 1965. I was born in the City of Johannesburg, and lived there with my family.
In the summer of 1984, I moved to the City of Ottawa, Ontario, and studied civil engineering at Carleton University as part of an exchange program. The Confederation of Canada has always fascinated me and I was thrilled at the opportunity to visit it. It's an experience that changed my life. I think Canada is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I'll always treasure my time there.
At Carleton University I met a tall, handsome young Black man named Joseph Kingston. He was born and raised in the City of Ottawa, but his family emigrated to Ontario from the island of Jamaica in the late 1960s. Joseph played football for the school, and had loads upon loads of girls after him but I'm the one he wanted. I had never met anyone like Joseph. He was fearless, so unlike the Black men I saw in the Republic of South Africa, who were conditioned to fear us White women, for White males in South Africa punished them for even looking at us.
Joseph Kingston pursued me, and even though I was initially reluctant, I eventually gave in to this tall, handsome Black male student. He was handsome and brilliant, and our whirlwind romance changed my life. I'm a six-foot-tall, plain-faced and rather chubby woman with mousy brown hair and pale blue eyes. I am far from the ideal of beauty. Yet Joseph found me beautiful and treated me like a queen. Joseph is the first man I ever had sex with. I was raised in the Dutch Reformed of Johannesburg, and believed in saving myself for marriage like a good Christian lass. Yet I couldn't resist Joseph Kingston, the gorgeous Jamaican man who stole my heart.
Our relationship got serious, and after six months together, Joseph asked me to stay with him in Ottawa. I wanted to, more than anything, but as an exchange student I had to return to South Africa at the end of the year. I tried to make Joseph understand that my family, like true Afrikaners, simply wouldn't accept us. Joseph called me a coward and broke up with me. For weeks I wept over the demise of our relationship. Eventually, I moved on. I returned to Johannesburg the following year, putting my memories of Ottawa behind me.
In 1987, I met a young man named Clyde Russell, who moved to Johannesburg, Gauteng, from his hometown of Berkshire, England. We got married, and in 1989, we had a daughter, Wilma. I settled into the life of a proper wife and mother, and my husband and our daughter were my entire world. In 1993, my world ended. Tensions between the Black African population and the White settlers was growing in the Republic of South Africa, and many of us Afrikaners feared an all-out uprising by the Black majority.
This was a doomsday scenario for us Afrikaners, and we knew it. The world demanded that legendary activist and freedom fighter Nelson Mandela be freed and that Black majority rule be established in the country. The White minority population was deathly afraid of that. Many of us began leaving the country during that time. My husband Clyde was a staunch supporter of the Apartheid regime, and considered the Blacks to be utter savages. He wasn't one to mince words or play the diplomat, my poor Clyde.
One day, Clyde got into a fight with a burly young Zulu man named Aaron Jabulani, and during that scuffle, Clyde suffered a fatal blow to the temple and got killed instantly. Aaron Jabulani was relentlessly pursued by the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police but somehow, he escaped. The authorities say he had help. The Blacks always protect their own, and as a Black man daring enough to kill a racist White man, Aaron would be considered a hero by many while others would view him as a pariah.
Aaron Jabulani killed my husband, but I didn't know how to feel about him. On one hand I wept for my husband, but on the other hand, I knew how much of a brute he could be. He beat our Black servants, and sometimes, when he got angry or drunk, Clyde used to beat me as well. I endured years of abuse at the hands of Clyde because I was raised to believe that a true Christian woman submits to her husband and that it's what the Almighty intended. I didn't know about feminism and campaigns against domestic violence or things of that nature. Remember, this was South Africa, not North America or Europe.
After the election of President Nelson Mandela and the official end of Apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation hearings began and Blacks and Whites came to listen to them en masse. I was shocked to meet Aaron Jabulani there. He'd been living in the nearby Republic of Zimbabwe ever since he murdered Clyde and came back to South Africa seeking forgiveness, claiming that he hadn't meant to kill my erstwhile husband. I am sorry it was an accident, Aaron said, before a crowd of Blacks and Whites inside a courtroom in downtown Johannesburg.
I looked into the tall, burly Black man's eyes, and even though I was angry at Aaron for murdering Clyde, I didn't see evil in his eyes. I forgive you, I told him, then I shed a single tear. It was definitely a moment that many who witnessed it would never forget. The wife of a murdered White male South African forgave the Black man who killed him during a fistfight. It's the Christian thing to do, I told a pretty red-haired White female reporter from CNN when queried on the subject. Then I went home.
In 2004, my daughter Wilma died in a car crash while visiting some school friends in the City of Durban. The day my daughter died, my heart turned to stone. For a long time I prayed for death, for I had nothing to live for. In the span of a few years I lost first my husband Clyde then our only daughter Wilma. Why does tragedy continue to strike me? I became a recluse, staying at home and reading, constantly cleaning and rearranging Clyde's old study and Wilma's old bedroom, staring longingly into their old pictures. Ten long years went by in this manner...
One day, at the start of the summer of 2014, a man came to my door. A tall, burly Black man in a dark business suit and tie. His beard had some gray in it but I recognized him instantly. Aaron Jabulani, I said, and he nodded gently. Aaron asked me if he could come in and after a brief hesitation, I nodded. We sat in the living room and Aaron told me why he came. Since I last saw him, Aaron had been living in the United States, where he moved to for school. He proudly showed me both his MBA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his New England real estate licence. Congratulations, I told him.