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.