Junior School Pupils E-visit with award winning author, Beverley Naidoo

Beverley shared an iconic image which illustrated really well what apartheid felt and looked like for those involved, including the idea of white children having a ‘second mother’ and the family structures commonplace at the time; the way children of white families were expected to use, what is now, cruel language to address and describe the black ‘servants’ within the households was something which we now would feel very unusual, unkind and inappropriate. Beverley reflected upon her and her family’s role in apartheid, saying her family were ‘shaped by their history’ and told us how she felt complicit in, but powerless at her time of being a young person, to do much about, apartheid. 

Beverley wrote Journey to Jo’burg knowing that it would be banned in South Africa and she wrote for children because she said, “Children are the future!”. 

“What really inspired me was how people fought back. The cruelty that black people like Nelson Mandela faced during apartheid was terrible.” Noah 

Beverley shared her experiences of writing and answered questions from the pupils. She also invited the pupils to join her in performing a poem about freedom, and then shared an extract from her new book, Children of the Stone City.

The pupils were challenged to think about the world around them and how they can stand up to injustice.