Читать книгу The Verwoerd who Toyi-Toyied - Melanie Verwoerd - Страница 5

Foreword

Melanie was never going to be just your ordinary run-of-the-mill kind of person. How could she be, marrying as she did into the Verwoerd family in South Africa? For all South Africans, black and white, her husband’s grandfather, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, was the architect of the policy of apartheid. Nearly all whites revered him, since they benefited so conspicuously from apartheid, and almost all blacks detested him, as the victims trodden under-foot by its viciousness.

She and her husband Wilhelm committed what was for the majority of white South Africans the ultimate treachery: they joined Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress a few years before South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. Wilhelm’s grandfather must have been spinning in his grave.

After those elections, the ANC could justifiably boast that it was reflecting the new South Africa, which sought to be non-racial and non-sexist – more than any other party. Did it not, after all, have a Verwoerd on its parliamentary benches?

She went as South African ambassador to Ireland, accompanied of course by her family. She soon made her mark, so that when her term as ambassador ended, she was appointed as head of UNICEF Ireland – unusually, as she was not Irish. Sadly, she and Wilhelm divorced. She fell in love with Gerry Ryan, a hugely popular radio and TV personality. They were deeply in love but could not marry. One day, Melanie and her son discovered him dead. The inquest into his death led to all sorts of scurrilous stories in the media. Some were quite vicious.

This touching love story has been written in part to counter those awful media misrepresentations. Perhaps we should be grateful for these stories, though, since without them we might never have had the chance of reading such a lyrical and beautiful love story, which tugs at the heartstrings. She loved deeply and suffered much, but what a doughty and elegant human being. Thank you, Melanie, for your deep loving, and your courage to take them on. I admire and love you.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu