My mother would tell a very personal story of South Africa’s fledgling democracy over Sunday lunch in my childhood. When in labour with me, and contractions and discomfort became steadily indicative of my arrival, she signalled to my father that it was time to go to the hospital.
She’d get animated at this point in the story, much to my chagrin, pretending to breathe through a contraction as she would have done on the back seat of their bright red Ford Tracer en route to the hospital. Pausing for dramatic effect, she’d then recount my father’s panicked question from the driver’s seat, ‘Where should I go? To the front, or to the back?’
