Mavis & the Law

The first time Dr. Johan Hendrik Botha saw green-eyed blonde Mavis, she was clad in rags, covered with veld sores and standing barefooted on the cow-dung floor of a filthy Zulu kraal. Horrified, the doctor, who treats thousands of Zulus in the lonely hills of northern Natal, decided instantly that six-year-old Mavis was a white child; he took her home. Young Mrs. Botha gave Mavis a good bath, tied her hair in gay ribbons, gave her her first doll, her first shoes and set her at a table to learn to eat with knife & fork.

The Zulus could tell Dr. Botha nothing about the child's origin, save her name. She could not speak a word of English and the Bothas could only communicate with her through their Zulu kitchen boy. Mavis, however, loved her soft mattress and liked salads better than the Zulu putu (porridge).

But last week, though Mavis had left the Zulus, she had not yet found a haven in Malan's white South Africa. Officials took a dim view of Dr. Botha's "rescue" of the child. Said the local probation officer: "Mavis may not be of pure European descent." The Bothas were told that Mavis might be placed in "an institution for colored girls." For under South Africa's race laws, people who cannot prove their "pure European descent" are judged "colored," however fair their skin, unless they can show they have "habitually associated" with white persons. And Mavis had spent all her short life with the Zulus.

Where was Mavis to go? She no longer belonged to the Zulus; in just two short weeks away from the kraal, she was taking on the ways of South African civilization. When the Bothas took her back to the kraal for a visit, her old Zulu "mother" called her "Missie" (Mistress) and kissed her. Mavis carefully wiped her lips with a handkerchief and turned away, saying angrily: "I am white, not black like this old woman. Take me away from here." Dr. Botha said desperately: "We are medically positive the child is pure white. Her eyes, hair, cuticles, gums, all prove she has no color in her. We feel definite that she was abandoned by white parents."

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