South Africa 30

Listen to South Africa 30, a 33-year-old woman from Pretoria and Alberton, South Africa. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 33

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 31/05/1976

PLACE OF BIRTH: Bloemfontein, South Africa, but raised in Pretoria and Alberton

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: housewife

EDUCATION: higher diploma

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

Subject spent her early days in Pretoria but grew up in Alberton, Johannesburg. She then lived in Vienna, Austria, for a year. She had been living in California for seven years at the time of this interview.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject grew up speaking Afrikaans. She was introduced to English in grammar school but was not fluent until the age of 20.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Megan Pickrell (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/11/2009

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I love South Africa; let’s start with that.  It’s a very different culture… uh… just because of the fear element of growing up … um … with all the violence.  I actually told someone the  other day that … like … if my parents went out on a date night … and I was like 13 or 14 or 15 years old.  I would stay home, and we had an alarm system.  And I would have the alarm system with a panic button.  I would have the phone, to phone the police, if … not that … the police in South Africa’s not like the police in America, but have that, and have the gun.  And so that was … And like … friends of ours in church now, that leads a church, they lead a church in South Africa.  This was about two years ago.  She was pregnant, far pregnant, and like, had gone home at night.  I think it was after a meeting.  There were guys waiting for them, but like hiding, so when he, the husband… which… the pastor, when he got out of the car, they jumped and held them at gunpoint, forced them into the house.  Luckily they didn’t do anything to them which is a miracle because… I mean seriously, I know so many people that have stories about either family members or friends that have been raped, killed, murdered in their homes.  And they do it for nothing because… they do it for twenty dollars … And that for me is heart breaking because I … I think the human condition, just being so stripped from worth.  It’s not, I don’t blame them.  I just … I’ve seen like how they live and how I think they, they are stuck in feeling like they not valued, at all.  They live in, on the ground, you know, I mean on the cold ground.  Maybe surrounded by cardboard, maybe thrown away … as a baby. I mean there are homes for AIDS babies that are found in toilets and found in like, one … I visited, I visited AIDS orphanages in these townships where the babies get thrown away.  So, street children … tons and tons of street children; just living on sniffing glue … and … I’m not making these stories up, they’re real. So, you know, so if you live in a violent … you grow up in a violent environment… where there’s no love … where you have to fend for yourself … I mean, what really can be the, end product of that?

TRANSCRIBED BY: Megan Pickrell (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/11/2009

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

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