Tales from the Rainbow Nation

The sullen eighteen-year-old girl from Cheshire did not want to emigrate to South Africa in 1982. Apartheid was one of the reasons but there were others. She went to keep the family together. She stayed, finished schooling, got her first job, fell in love, married and had babies. In 1994 she queued with her husband for 12 hours to cast her vote in the first Free and Fair elections. And so for some time she and her husband with a growing family enjoyed life in their own family home. They seemed to flourish in a new country filled with hope. But hope did not turn into a new reality for too many - for too many life remained a bitter disappointment. The author's honest and open approach to the momentous turning point in history and the subsequent first years that followed makes these poems and memories a unique record of South Africa at that time..