United Nations Radio

Sandra Laing

INTRO: The true story of a black child born to white parents in apartheid South Africa is the subject of a feature film which was screened at the UN this week and is now showing in theaters in New York. The film, entitled Skin, is more than the story of Sandra Laing's journey. It's also about the human need to belong. Diane Bailey has more.

DIANE: Nineteen-fifties South Africa was a solidly racist society where everyone was formally "classified" based on his or her racial group. Into this society, where whiteness meant privilege and being black meant you were at the bottom of the social rung, Sandra Laing, a child black in appearance, is born to white parents. Tony Fabian has directed a film about Sandra's unique story.

FABIAN: I first heard the story of Sandra Laing in my kitchen listening to the radio. I am an avid fan of BBC Radio 4. There was an interview with Sandra which told the whole story. I found it immediately very compelling - the dynamic between this child and her parents. And also the strangeness of it struck me immediately: black child born to white parents - genetically, like everyone else, I was curious as to how that was possible. But it was really the time and place that the story took place in that made it so extraordinary because apartheid South Africa was not an easy place for a family like this to survive in.

DIANE: Unlike many parents who in such a society might reject a child who was different in physical appearance, her parents loved Sandra. Her father fought to ensure that she was classified white so that she could attend a good school and have all the other privileges whites in apartheid South Africa enjoyed. When she became a teenager, he was eager to see her date and eventually marry a young white man. Sandra understood that.

LAING: My father tried his best to give me a proper life but I chose black people over them and I left home.

DIANE: Did you really choose black people over them or did you choose someone who wouldn't reject you?

LAING: Yeah, I can say I chose Petrus because he understood me and I was in love with him and we decided to leave.

DIANE: So Sandra chose her black lover, Petrus and left the privileged world being classified white afforded her, but not without the pain the separation from her parents and two brothers brought her. Today, Sandra can say that seeing her story on the big screen and the reaction of audiences to it has helped her heal that pain.

LAING: Through the film I have healed a lot because I was always sad and wanted to be alone. Talking about and seeing the film life is much better.

DIANE: Director Tony Fabian says the film's message can be encapsulated in the African concept "ubuntu" meaning that we are bound together by our common humanity, rather than by the things that divide us.

FABIAN; I think there's a tendency because of our tribal instincts to look at people in terms of what makes them different rather than what makes them similar to us as human beings. And we look at the superficial instead of looking beyond that. So I think the message of my film is try and get to the heart of people, get to know them as human beings, don't judge them simply through their appearance. After all the skin is an organ, like the liver. And I don't think I would judge anyone by the look of their liver any more than I would by the color of their skin.

DIANE: Tony Fabian, director of the film SKIN, which tells the story of Sandra Laing, a black child born to white parents in South Africa. Diane Bailey for UN Radio.

(duration: 3'28")