Newspaper Page Text
Foreign Nationals
On Spelman's Campus
The following is an interview of Lindi Yeni bs Margaret Lee.
Lindi is a Junior Sociology major at Spelman from South
Africa. Margaret is the Political Editor for the Spotlight.
Margaret: Could you give us a
little background of your
lifestyle while you were in South
AfricajO
Lindi: I’ll try and go back some
13 or 14 years. I was born in
Pietermaritzburg which is the
judician capital
f South Africa which is the
province of Natal. We later
moved to Durban, a seaport-
before we left South Africa. My
father is a teacher and my
mother is a nurse. There are
five children in the family. Both
of my parents ave an adequate
education and it was through
this education that they got
politically involved, especially
my father, while they were at
Foithare University in Cape
Town. Most children that came
from middle class families went
to Forthare.
Margaret 3 /* So most of the
middle class children received
education, but what about the
lower classes?
The oppression is really the
same for all Africans. Money,
of course, can pull you out a
little. The lower incme families
might go
Forthare with some govern
ment scholarships. Most
parents understand that if you
can get an education you have a
better chance of bettering your
way of life. So they do their best
with the little bit of money that
they have to take t eir children
to school no matter how poor
they are. For whites in South
Africa, education is free and
compulsory; for Blacks it is a
struggle. South Africa has what
they call Bantu education,
especially designed for jblacks.
It is inferior in its structure. The
educational system is under
governmental control. Most of
the teachers are Black.
Margaret: In what way is the
educational system inferior?
lindi: The teachers are not
qualified for they don’t have the
proper facilities nor have they
been able to acquire the proper
knowledge or specialization
necessary to properly teach.
The educational system is
specifically geared toward not
motivating the child. The
government doesn’t want the
sc s to produce any good
si its. In terms of books, you
ju on’t have any. A student
r nish primray school and
e = ave seen a math :
B ret: What he
cl;; >m structure like" ow
ma students are there to a
teacher?
the government. .-n’t
c;;/ how many students • a
Lendl Yeni, South African
Junior at Spelman
teacher has. You have about
sixty students to a teacher. The
teacher therefore doesnt have
Margaret: Well, how is higher
education possible?
lindi: There are a number of
Universities for Blacks.
Education goes into a high level,
but compared to the education
that whites get, it is inferior.
We are fighting more or less the
same kind of fight over here for
better education, and equal
facilities.
Margaret: How is the housing
situation in South Africa?
Lindi: We live in separate
sections of the town. Our
section they call locations, the
whites live in the suburbs. The
locations are built by the
government. The houses at the
most have two bedrooms, no
matter how many children you
have, and they all look alike.
Margaret: What are the con
sequences for Blacks after dark
in the cities of South Africa?
Lindi: Consequences usually
arise mostly in cities where you
find many Afrikaners - (the
Boers who are the Dutch
descendents of South Africa).
By sun down all Blacks are
supposed to be out of all white
sections. Every Black South
African carries what the
government calls passes. This
is your certificate of iden
tification and you carry it with
you everywhere you go. You
begin around the age of sixteen
or seventeen.
Margaret: What’s the distin
ction between the coloreds and
Blacks?
Lindi: The coloreds are light
skinned and of mixed blood.
They don’t have to carry passes.
They get better jobs than the
bum Africans. They are treated j
in a better way and they get a |
bettei education than pure jj
South Africans. So sometimes I
you find the same thing that was |
going on in America.
Continued on page 11
By Debbi Newton
Editor
Soft-spoken and petite, Tran Ai
Soan, a Spelman freshman from Saigon
City, explains that here in America
she is known as Soan. At home in
South Vietnam she would be known
by the family name-Tran.
Although she is soft-spoken, when
she does speak, Soan is master of four
different languages-french, Chinese,
Vietnamese, and english.
Soan, who is Chinese and the first
generation of her family to be born in
South Vietnam, received her secondary
education in the French government
public schools of South Vietnam.
Schools she describes as being “labori
ous.”
Soan was born 20 years ago in Sai
gon, the capital of South Vietnam. She
and her family of five-her mother, an
aunt, and two older sisters departed
last May to the U.S. Their departure
was marked just ten days prior to the
capital city’s surrender to the North
Vietnamese.
Soan said that when she and her
family departed the American govern
ment in South Vietnam had begun
encouraging Vietnamese who were
American citizens to re-patriate to
America. Soan’s two older sisters
are both American citizens and U.S.
government computer programmers
in Iran.
Soan’s sisters sponsored the family
of five. That is how Soan, who had
already made plans to study in
America, made it to the states.
According to Soan, there was never
any intimation that the South would
surrender to the North. “We did not
believe that the South Vietnamese
would surrender to the North Vietna
mese,” Soan said. “There was no
fighting. There was nothing,” she
added.
The Tran family once lived in the
“beautiful” countryside surrounding
the capital city. Saigon is now known
as Ho Chi Minh City in the aftermath
of the communist take-over.
Soan’s family owned an export-
import business in Saigon. A business
that exported and imported chemical
cleaners. In Saigon, Soan said that
her family was considered middle-
class. She insists however, that there
are no racial or class distinctions in
South Vietnam.
Soan said that the family business
was left behind when they departed
for the states. She said that there was
not time to sell the business and inti
mates that it is probably now owned
by the communist forces.
Up until 1968, Soan said that she
had not seen any actual fighting occur
in Saigon. When communist forces
attacked the city in 1968, she remem
bers that, “we could look outside of
our window to the other side of the
river and see the sky turn red whenever
planes attacked.” She said that every-
where-men, women, and children
would “run, scream, and cry.”
During that 1968 attack, Soan
said that the South Viet capital was
deluged with curfew hours, air raids,
bombings, and the fetid odor of dead
flesh. She recalls the truck loads of
dead being transported through the
city streets.
Soan believes that media coverage
of the Vietnamese conflict by South
Viet news agencies was one-sided.
“Government newspapers were not
honest,” she said. “The private news
papers more often told the truth,”
she added.
Soan reiterates that though she
left South Vietnam just ten days prior
to the invasion, she never expected the
capital city to surrender. She says that
she has contact with South Viets here
in the states who left Saigon only one
day before the surrender. South Viets
who maintain that even they drew
no indications of the possibility of a
surrender.
There is a Cuban film that docu
ments the welcoming in of the Khmer
Rouge—the communist forces— by the
South Viet people. Soan, who by the
time of that final invasion was safe
within the U.S., contends that the
South Viet people “were tired of the
killing.”
On other subjects, Soan said that;
—Vietnamese refugees do not distrust
the American government. She
believes that the refugees feel indebted
to the UlS. for saving their lives.
-There is a degree of distrust of
North Viets by South Viets who
remain in South Vietnam. Distrust
that she said arises out of the long
drawn out hostilities and the war.
-She feels that the north and south
should not become one country
because a significant number of South
Viets were not in favor of communism.
—French style continues to prevail in
both clothing and architect in South
Vietnam. The French language is more
widely spoken by the South Vietna
mese as opposed to the English langu
age.
Soan’s brother-in-law has family in
Atlanta, and that is how she, her
mother, and her aunt came to settle
here
Soan is a computer science major
who chose Spelman primarily because
of it's location. It is close to her
Atlanta home. She did however, want S
to attend a small liberal arts college
for women. Soan said that the
racial make-up of the college does not
affect her performance.