Sandra Laing was born on 26 November 1955 and is a South African woman who was classified as Coloured by authorities during the apartheid era, due to her skin colour and hair texture, although she was officially listed as the child of at least three generations of ancestors who had been regarded as white.
16 Facts About Sandra Laing
1.
2.
Susanna Magrietha "Sandra" Laing was born in 1955 to Susanna Margaretha "Sannie" and Abraham Laing, Afrikaners in Piet Retief, a small conservative town in South Africa during the apartheid era, when laws governed officially established social castes of racial classification.
3.
Sandra Laing had darker skin than other members of her family, which seemed to become more obvious as she grew older.
4.
Sandra Laing's family treated her as white, the same as their sons Adriaan and Leon, and together they all attended the Dutch Reformed Church.
5.
When Sandra Laing was 10 years old and at an all-white boarding school, the school authorities expelled her because of complaints from the parents of other students, based on her appearance: primarily her skin colour and the texture of her hair.
6.
Sandra Laing was expelled and escorted home by two police officers.
7.
Sandra Laing's parents fought several legal battles to have her classified as white, based on her documented ancestry through them.
Related searches
Piet Retief 8.
Sandra Laing's father underwent a blood-typing test for paternity in the 1960s, as DNA tests were not yet available.
9.
Sandra Laing attended a Coloured boarding school away from her family and became immersed in the non-white world.
10.
At the age of 16, Sandra Laing eloped to Swaziland with Petrus Zwane, a black South African who spoke Zulu.
11.
Sandra Laing was jailed for three months for illegal border-crossing.
12.
Sandra Laing's father threatened to kill her for the marriage and broke off contact with her.
13.
Except for secret trips to see her mother when her father was out of the house, Sandra Laing was estranged from her family and struggled to survive economically.
14.
In 2000 the Johannesburg Times tracked down Sandra Laing to learn about her years since the end of apartheid.
15.
The newspaper helped Sandra Laing find her mother, who was in a nursing home by that time.
16.
Sandra Laing has said in interviews with The Guardian and Little White Lies that she continued to hope they would some day have a change of heart.