A few introductory remarks about my own philosophical development will help to contextualise the issue that I want to focus on. The issue is on the one hand an invented historiography – the invention of history – and the harm it does to a society; and then, on the other hand, the use of race as an instrument of policy implementation.

I must say at the outset that for me the concept ‘race’ has no scientific basis whatsoever, but the fact that people believe it makes it real in its consequences; and it is those consequences that we have to deal with most of the time.

The Nationalist Party came to power in 1948. I was at that time in Standard One at Jan Cilliers Laerskool here in Parkview. My classmates were Hendrik Verwoerd, Nico Diederichs and MC Botha – obviously, the sons of the fathers of the Nationalist Party.

After Standard One I was whisked away with my twin sister to Marabastad farm school, 17 miles this side of Polokwane (it's no longer called Marabastad, I think it's called Eerstegoud). There, for the very first time, I really saw and experienced the tail end of Afrikaner poor white-ism. Those were seriously, seriously poor people, and although my grandfather could afford shoes for me, the idea was that we would not wear shoes so as not to shame those who could not afford them, so we all walked around barefoot, winter and summer, and I felt at the end of the winter that I could dropkick a brick from the quarter-line over the poles.

I went to Pietersburg High School and for various reasons became born-again and decided I wanted to become a dominee (a priest). I went to Wits University for my first year because there I could do classical studies such as Greek and Latin but they didn't have classical Hebrew. In my first year, the Pan Africanist Congress leader Robert Sobukwe was teaching African languages. I remember going to one of his lectures, and it was absolutely packed. In fact I felt a bit like Piet Retief there. There were hardly any whites in that audience.