Special Report Transcript Episode 86, Section 4, Time 26:49

I was one of five brothers and sisters. My parents are devout Catholics. My grandparents immigrated here from Ireland, came here as poor immigrants and I was brought up in a large Catholic family. And myself, my brothers and sisters all went to Catholic schools and I think that’s where I can date my if I can call it ‘my morality’ to, is that sort of Christian or Catholic, liberal upbringing. After I left school I went to university in Cape Town and I studied law there. And I think that was also a very, very important era for me for the development of my social consciousness. Because prior to that I had been in the army. I had spent a year in the army and I didn’t question my role, I thought that’s what young white men did and I went to the army without any moral question marks hanging over me. After the army I went to university and I think there I fundamentally changed the way I look at life, particularly life in this country. // I’m married. My wife’s name is Elda, she works at the University of Natal and we have two children Rosa and Leon who are 13 and 11 and we are a very close family. // We try to bring up our children in the same way that my parents brought up me and my brothers and sisters. They brought us up to essentially respect people’s individual dignity and to treat everybody with equal respect and dignity, no matter who they were, black or white or who ever. And we try to bring up our children in exactly the same way.

Notes: Richard Lyster

References: there are no references for this transcript