A few years back, I started a series called “My African Story”, where I interviewed people in my contacts about their connection and roots to Africa. Among the people I spoke too was Rwandan Canadian rapper Shad Kabango, who was voted in the top three Canadian rappers of all time and the host of the award-winning Netflix series “HipHop Revolution”. Thankfully, Neil Turok, one of the most prominent and proficient scientists of our time, accepted to speak to me about his life and his connection to the continent. Neil Turok’s life is interesting and unique because he was born in South Africa during apartheid, and, as a white South African, you’d expect him to have had a blissful life in the country of his birth, but you’d be wrong. Neil’s parents would give up their “Privilage” to fight for equality of their fellow countrymen and women, this would land the family in hot water and Neil would grow up in exile in Kenya and Tanzania before later migrating to the United Kingdom. Here’s part one of a three piece series, written in the first person narrative to make the story more personal.

My name is Neil Turok and I was born in the heart of one of the world’s most beautiful cities: Johannesburg, South Africa. By some measures, it is fair to say that I had a difficult childhood, while in other ways, I had as beautiful a life growing up in Africa as any child could hope for. Both the richness and the difficulty of my childhood stemmed from the years of ardent political activism my parents were engaged in as I grew up. My father and mother, both white South Africans at a time when the country was still ruled by the injustices and cruelty of the apartheid system, were among the relatively few members of their race and class who consistently, vehemently opposed the racial inequities of that time. Having been chosen as a representative of coloured people in Cape Town my father was so heavily involved in advocating for the rights and freedoms of coloured people that the government eventually abolished his position.

His sense of justice, combined with his frustration at the many forms of government inaction that further entrenched the ills of racism across the country, eventually led him to join African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s social democratic party. When, in the early 1960’s, the ANC decided to take up an armed struggle, my father joined and was among those fighting.

For his role in the armed struggle, my father ended up in jail. Therefore, I say that in some ways, my childhood was difficult, or at least it was full of certain pressures that were uncommon for white families in South Africa. After my father was released from prison, he escaped from South Africa illegally, traveling to Botswana, Zambia and eventually Nairobi.

Despite the years of tumult and upheaval our family experienced in South Africa, and despite the memories of police officers banging on our door, or raiding our home for banned books and music, my own political understanding of the world was shaped more powerfully by other experiences.

My parents were in favor of my brothers and I playing with black kids. My mother and father were committed to disabusing us of any belief in racial distinction or hierarchy. More than any of their activism, or the harsh consequences thereof, it was my parents’ determination to instill in us a belief in the dignity and beauty of humanity--irrespective of race--that had the greatest impact on my burgeoning worldview. As a child, I had many genuine and close friendships with black kids. The more time we spent together, the more we grew to understand how many things we had in common, including a mutual love for football and comic books.

In some simple but poignant way, the experience of sharing and reading comics with black kids in the neighborhood was a political education of its own. For one thing, it was often us white kids who owned the comics, which was a signal of the economic disparities our country’s racism had forged between its white population and its non-white population. Within the group of comic-reading boys, there was a black boy of maybe 7 years old. He desperately wanted to enjoy the comics alongside us, but he had not yet learned to read. So, instead of letting himself be excluded, he simply pretended to read by mimicking, in innocent melody, the lilting tones of voice he heard around him.

For all of us--white kids and black kids alike--there was a sobering reality expressed in the young boy’s mimicry. It taught us that even though we were friendly with one another, and even though black kids were lovely, the deep unfairness of the apartheid system meant that the black kids did not have the same things that we, the white kids, had. Even though he desperately wanted to be able to read, the shadow of a system much, much larger than himself meant that he could not access the necessary education. Within that moment I understood, in an acute way, the sort of awful injustices my mother and father were working hard to oppose through their activism.

The Johannesburg of that time was also rife with other signs of racism. Traveling through the city at night, one could see long lines of black and coloured people being handcuffed. They were handcuffed because many of them had come to Johannesburg looking for work, but non-white people were not allowed into Johannesburg, according to law, they could not more freely through the city without a permit.

            I can remember officers shouting: ‘Where is your permit?’ ‘Are you allowed in Johannesburg?’

 Situations like these, combined with the scrutiny and surveillance my parents were under, forced us to leave South Africa for many, many years.

 My most positive childhood experiences would happen later, when our family moved to Kenya, and then to Tanzania, where I had my first teachers and attended primary school. In Tanzania, I had a great teacher who used to get me to do lots of experiments and outdoor activities. She had us making maps of the school, studying insects and flowers, pouring water to teach us about the laws of displacement of water by bodies. All of these fundamental, curious nuances of the natural world, I learned in Tanzania.

My time there was like a golden age, not only because of the richness of the education I received during the school year, but because of holidays spent camping around Mt. Kilimanjaro, visiting the Serengeti and other places of sublime beauty. It truly was a golden age: the world still felt naive in a lovely way, independence was fresh in people’s minds, president Julius Nyerere was an amazing, honest leader who urged the country toward an attitude of self-determination and self-sufficiency.

In the Tanzania of my childhood, it was the brilliance of the human spirit that made life beautiful for me, my family, and indeed, everyone who shared the land in those days. We lived simply, without the luxury of a television, and we valued nature. Our lives were full of outdoor activities: building huts, riding bikes in the wild areas near the city, swimming and doing all of the thing’s kids love to do. I had an amazing childhood there; I could not have asked for a better one. Truly, my experiences in Tanzania, as much as any other place, raised me into the knowledge of Africa as a uniquely special place, and a place which my heart can never truly leave, no matter where else in the world my work takes me.

Back in South Africa, when Apartheid fell and the country had its first democratic elections in 1994, both my parents would join Nelson and Winnie Mandela as the first couples to serve in the South African parliament. All under the African National Congress party.

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The second part of this series focuses on the teacher and the education Neil received in Tanzania and his overall African Education that he credits as having led him to science & physics. You can find the link to the piece HERE.
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