Editor -

When I was a young lad growing up in Cape Town, I didn't even know what apartheid was. It never really affected me. I led a happy life blinded with ignorance. As a white person, I was able to get a good education and eventually, a successful high-paying job . I settled down in a nice community and started a family with my white wife. Then apartheid ended. I came home one night and found my house ransacked. The police told us that now many freed blacks were unemployed and lacking any means of support, so they turned to crime. But now we had lost almost everything . Then I was fired and replaced by a black man willing to work for a fraction of my salary. With so many people competing for my job, my boss said they had to let me go. Now my wife has left me and I'm an alcoholic chain smoker.