Through the questions of a seven-year-old girl and her conversations with her grandmother, Monica Clarke’s illustrated book helps children explore apartheid, fairness and human rights. Drawing on her own experience of apartheid South Africa, the author opens a conversation between generations.
How do you explain injustice to a child who is only beginning to understand the world around them?
In Apartheid and Me, Monica Clarke begins with seven-year-old Nangamsa, who lives with her grandmother, Ouma, in a South African township. Nangamsa notices the restrictions that shape everyday life and wants to understand them. Why should rules about where people live, learn, work or belong depend on the colour of their skin?
She calls it “weird Apartheid”. Through her questions and Ouma’s responses, young readers are invited to consider a system that adults enforced but a child struggles to make sense of.
Written for children under ten, the fully illustrated book introduces difficult history through family conversations and everyday experiences.
Understanding history through a child’s eyes
For younger readers, terms such as racial classification and segregation can be difficult to grasp. Clarke approaches them through their effects on people’s lives.
Nangamsa’s observations introduce the restrictions that separated communities and shaped childhood under apartheid. Her conversations with Ouma explore how racial rules reached into neighbourhoods, schools, places of worship and family relationships.
The book introduces laws including the Group Areas Act and the prohibition on marriages between white and non-white people. Its focus remains on what those restrictions meant for human beings: where they could make a home, whom they could share their lives with and how they were treated.
The relationship between Nangamsa and her grandmother provides a familiar starting point. A child asks questions; an older relative helps her understand. That exchange gives readers room to pause, consider what they have heard and ask questions of their own.
A starting point for families and schools
Apartheid and Me is intended to help parents, carers and teachers begin conversations about racism, dignity and human rights.
Its child-centred approach creates opportunities to discuss questions that younger readers can recognise. What makes a rule unfair? Does something become right simply because it is permitted by law? How should people respond when others are treated differently because of who they are?
For Black History Month learning, these conversations offer a way to connect historical understanding with a wider awareness of fairness and discrimination.
The book concludes with a short historical overview for adults and educators, providing context to support discussion. English, French and Spanish editions are available.
An author drawing on lived experience
Clarke’s interest in helping children understand apartheid comes from her own life.
Born into apartheid South Africa, she spent 25 years as an activist in the liberation movement, the African National Congress. After leaving the country as a refugee, she was granted political asylum in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s.
She has since drawn on those experiences in her work with excluded communities and in conversations in classrooms, workplaces and boardrooms.
School visits are particularly important to her. Speaking at assemblies gives children an opportunity to ask directly about life under apartheid and to hear from someone who experienced it.
That personal connection also informs Apartheid and Me. The book brings a difficult subject closer to young readers through the voice of a child and the reassurance of a trusted adult, while encouraging them to question the injustices being described.
Supporting women and children today
Clarke’s commitment to human rights extends beyond her writing.
In 2013, she founded I Protect Me, an organisation that empowers women and children in South Africa to speak out and stand up against abuse. A donation from every sale of Apartheid and Me supports this work.
She also writes about human-rights issues for World Pulse, an international online resource for women, and speaks English, Afrikaans and French.
Through her book, educational work and advocacy, Clarke encourages people to recognise injustice and feel able to speak about it. For Nangamsa, that process begins with a question — one that young readers are invited to explore alongside her.
Where to find the book
Apartheid and Me by Monica Clarke is available as an eBook on Leanpub, with a minimum price of US$7.99.