APARTHEID'S GRANDDAUGHTER, an invitation to courage, responsibility and healing

153pp., paperback, Tracey McDonald Publishers, Johannesburg, 2026

ISBN: 9780639895062

Linda Rauch, granddaughter of one of the National Party's longest-serving ministers, reflects on growing up under apartheid in the inherited comfort and silence of white privilege, and how she arrived at a deeper understanding of responsibility, justice and repair. She discusses her difficult childhood, working in the townships of Cape Town, her career within the machinery of government, and the long, uneasy road of reckoning with what it means to be white, Afrikaans, and free in a country still carrying the weight of its past.

"My name is Lidia, and I am racist. I do not want to be, but I recognise that white supremacy shapes our society and has instilled in me a racial bias that I must actively work to unlearn. And I must choose it every day. Addiction is personal, Racism is structural. I did not invent it., but I am shaped by it. And like addiction, pretending I am exempt only strengthens it."

Lidia Rauch is the founder of Bloom, a social enterprise committed to building an inclusive South African society through promoting sustainable social and behavioural change.