South Africa’s first inter-racial marriage

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1949, inter-racial marriage and relationships were banned by South Africa’s apartheid government.

In June 1985, the ban was lifted.

Suzanne La Clerc and Protas Madlala were the first couple to tie the knot under the new rules.

Ashley Byrne was speaking to them in 2015.

Protas Madlala died in 2023.

A made in Manchester production for the BBC World Service

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: The wedding of Protas Madlala and American Susan Leclerc. Credit: Philip Littleton/AFP/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:41.6	Hello you're listening to the Witness History podcast on the BBC World Service.
0:48.0	For almost 40 years marriage between people from different ethnic backgrounds was banned in South Africa by the apartheid government.
0:56.0	The ban was lifted in 1985 and the first legal interracial wedding took place between
1:02.0	Suzanne Le Clerke and Proteus Madala.
1:05.1	In 2015 Ashley Byrne spoke to them about their wedding in South Africa. Crowds turned out to see the couple tie the knot in the small black
1:16.3	township of St. Wendellans in Natal. We had people at the wedding who said
1:21.2	they they heard about our wedding in Johannesburg on the train and they were
1:26.7	headed to Durbin and they thought they would just pop in to see if it was true that a white
1:31.2	woman was marrying a black guy. So it turned out that there were
1:35.5	hundreds of people at our wedding. Though a happy occasion on the surface, the
1:41.0	journey to the altar for Suzanne and protests had been fraught with fear.
1:45.0	For many years in South Africa it had been illegal for black and white people to have
1:49.8	sexual relations or to marry across racial lines.
1:54.1	But in April 1985, the apartheid regime signaled a change in the law. mixed marriages the South African government is to make them legal. But laws take
	...

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