My political radicalism was a by-product of growing up in South Africa—of the liberalism of my mother and the communist leanings of my father. South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s was a strange and terrible place. Young white people like me lived in a world of privilege, wealth, and advantage. The extent of our advantage was most evident in the disadvantage of the non-white South African people (Black Africans, Coloureds, and Indians), who vastly outnumbered and surrounded us in every aspect of our daily lives. Our homes had servants who lived in servant quarters in the backyards. Some homes had one servant, some had three and four. Few white homes had none. Servants prepared our food, made our beds each morning, polished our shoes each day, and tended our parents’ gardens. In affluent homes, they served us our meals, and we could, as teenagers returned from school, call to one or another of the servants to bring our lunch or a cup of tea.

We could chastise our servants if ...

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