before. But my mother was
unhappy at home, and when she
was twenty-two she ran away to live
in downtown Johannesburg. There
was only one problem: It was illegal
for black people to live there.
The ultimate goal of apartheid
was to make South Africa a white
country, with every black person
stripped of his or her citizenship
and relocated to live in the
homelands, the Bantustans, semi-
sovereign black territories that were
in reality puppet states of the
government in Pretoria. But this so-
called white country could not
function without black labor to