Best-seller helps expats Down Under find closure
STEENBERG-born author Beryl Crosher-Segers is making waves in Australia and southern Africa with the release of her memoirs, now the number one best-seller on Amazon Australia and Amazon Southern Africa.
A Darker Shade of Pale, which was released in April, details Crosher-Segers’ life on the Cape Flats.
It was the culmination of snippets of writing put together since the 1960s while growing up in Steenberg.
Crosher-Segers’ book speaks of injustices she and her family endured during apartheid. She said the success of the book was partly due to the closure it provided expats who didn’t experience the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa.
“Here in Australia we never lived through the TRC, we looked at it from afar. We as South Africans here are still very divided as expats. We haven’t experienced that closure.
“I don’t live with hatred or hold the perpetrators accountable, but I wanted my book to open up that communication. It confronts apartheid in a gentle way and I wanted that to be the message – that we need to talk about these things, not about the blame,” she said.
Crosher-Segers, who left South Africa in 1988, writes about witnessing the sorrow of families who were forcefully removed from Constantia and Claremont. It also speaks of the humiliation her family faced from officials of the apartheid regime.
She relays an incident where she and her husband, who were dating at the time, were confronted by police at Rhodes Memorial, which was known as a “lovers lane”.
“I was 17. My husband took me to Rhodes Memorial after seeing a movie at the Gem, it was night and I had no idea where he was taking me. We hardly stopped when I heard banging on my car door and it was the cops.
“They pulled us out of the car. Once they saw we were both coloured, they moved on.
“In another car there was a white guy and a coloured woman and they dragged her across the street to the police van. “I can still hear her screams.” For more on the book, visit https:// berylcroshersegers.com