I write this column from Wales, where I am attending my 50th school reunion. The journey began in 1971, when my education in Swaziland was abruptly disrupted. The SA government threatened to withdraw my passport, effectively barring me from continuing at Waterford Kamhlaba school, just as I started my O-level year.
My father suggested I make use of my still-valid passport to visit relatives in England and seek my passport’s renewal from there — if refused, I could choose whether to continue my education in England or return home, where I’d have to abandon my O levels for the inferior “Indian Affairs” system.
My aunt and uncle had emigrated under an exit permit, a mechanism used by the apartheid regime to rid itself of politically inconvenient citizens. Refugees to Britain were treated somewhat differently in those days — as my experience and that of my relations bear testimony. I was granted entry with ease even though my passport was soon to expire.
As anticipated, my passport was denied. I stayed on, with minimal administrative burden, and enrolled at a crammer to complete my O levels. The British authorities even provided me with a travel document valid for all journeys excluding SA.
Then came the search for an A-level school. My uncle and I visited several — uniformed boys, old stone buildings, neat quads. When my father sent me a brochure for Atlantic College (AC), an international boarding school in Wales, I was instantly intrigued, applied, and was accepted.
AC, was profoundly formative. I made lifelong friends and immersed myself in a diverse community. After AC, I read history at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. On graduating, the SA authorities finally renewed my passport — valid for six months. I packed up and returned home.
Throughout our time in Britain, my parents paid in full for my sister and I. We even managed to invest in property, contributing economically — not as burdens, but as active participants. My uncle and aunt served the NHS for decades and are still remembered with gratitude by those old enough to recall.
Their children are property-owning professionals: one a lawyer, the other a doctor whose son is completing a PhD and launching a publishing business. Another cousin, now deceased, married a British lawyer and their children are now successful professionals — all taxpayers and pretty much British to the core.
Far from making Britain “an island of strangers” — whether in Keir Starmer’s recent phrasing or Enoch Powell’s infamous rhetoric — our family’s UK chapter has been one of contribution: economically, professionally, socially and culturally.
Some may say we represent the kind of immigrants Britain should welcome, unlike the “hordes” arriving on small boats. But the truth is we arrived with no great wealth and little more than the Irish or other immigrants before us. We faced exclusion, worked hard, and fought for rights many now take for granted — rights that Reform, Tory and “Blue Labour” leaders seem eager to dismantle.
Some of us stayed, others left. But this rising tide of xenophobia, I am witness to will leave Britain poorer, economically and morally. Fearful, often misinformed followers are being rallied against a manufactured threat — one that diminishes our shared humanity and promotes a divisive nationalism.
In SA — defined by diversity — politicians such as Gayton McKenzie, Herman Mashaba and organisations such as Operation Dudula exploit fear of “the other” for political gain. One might ask: how different are our Nguni-speaking peoples from those in neighbouring, colonially carved-up states?
What distinguishes “our” Indians or Chinese from newcomers of the same heritage? I daresay, it’s my gentler experience of migrancy that prompts these questions.
• Cachalia is a former DA MP and public enterprises spokesperson.
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