I Trusted the Process: The Autobiography

By Paulus Norman Antonio

A mind-boggling South African true-life story of a former street kid who was deprived of his amazing father’s love and caring for thirty long years by spiteful family members on his late mother’s side.

As a result, he was exposed to the worst forms of poverty, racism, and discrimination. His diverse mixed racial roots and heritage – a lily-white Afrikaner great-grandfather and a Khoi great-grandmother did not give him favourable standing but against all odds, he finally obtained a decent education, lifting him out of his predicament to realise all his childhood dreams and live a life of freedom and opportunity in America.

This is his story of overcoming struggle and hardship to live his best life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paulus Norman Antonio
• Release date: Aug 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005915780

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Copyright © 2022 Paulus N. Antonio

Published by Paulus N. Antonio at Smashwords

First edition 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Paulus N. Antonio using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Peta Lee for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.org

E-mail: [e-mail]

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PAULUS N. ANTONIO

[e-mail]

Acknowledgment

I sincerely thank the Lord our God from the bottom of my deeply believing heart, mind, and soul for giving me the vision, since I was nine, to write this autobiography. As a staunch believer in Christ Jesus, our God, I have learned over the years that all things happen for a reason or purpose, and during certain seasons, so that He can be glorified and no one else, and be completely honoured, as in this instance. And I thank Him, too, that this book will be published not in my own timing but His.

All praise and honour to the Highest God, our God and Lord of all.

At the time I didn’t know how things would pan out for me in this life, but just like the biblical Joseph back in the day, I fully trusted God throughout the whole process, for I knew that He has been preparing me, since then, for a time such as this. I put my faith wholeheartedly in Christ Jesus, for whatever will happen to me in the future. He has, always, come through for me. Amen!

To my gorgeous wife Nola Antonio, for being the never-ending wind beneath my energetic wings over almost three and a half decades, through thick and thin, sunshine or rain: I love you, babe. There were times when she doubted me, but all thanks unto the Holy Spirit who convinced her otherwise.

To our children (and their spouses, and our grandchildren), Samantha Ah Goo, Grant Ah Goo, Lynn Antonio, Alex Tanev, Alicia Samson, Keenan Samson, and little James Kenneth Paul Ah Goo, Daniel Ah Goo, and Kyson Samson for believing in this project right from the word go. And to my great mentor and brother-in-law, the Honourable Colonel Solomon Samson, for his unselfish support during the writing process. To my beautiful cousin Cornelia Simons (nee Meyers): you’re a superstar and the reason why my late dad, Hendrik Meyers, went to his grave a happy man. And I sincerely thank you for that.

To my editors and Reach Publishers in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, for taking on this enormous project at the eleventh hour and in the process, turning it into a wonderful book,

and all the inspirational words right from the start when I gave them an insight into what I was writing about. Thank you for your outstanding and professional guidance through the whole process and for making this work possible.

Alison Parle, thank you for being such a great ambassador for your organisation and marketing it in such a professional manner.

A special word of thanks to our former, and one of four deputy national commissioners, Major General John Manuel, for playing such a pivotal role in my formative years as a police recruit doing my basic training at the Bishop Lavis Police College in Cape Town, in 1983. And for the unique way you lectured your police administration classes.

To each one of you out there, although not all mentioned by name in this book, both at home and abroad, thank you for your unconditional love and support during the writing process. Special thanks to one of our best guitarists and musical geniuses, Andre (Monde) De Lange, who left our shores many years ago in the prime of his youth for Stockholm, Sweden, seeking a musical career. He has never lost his humility and our mother tongue. He eventually found the proverbial pot of gold over there and never looked back. He found his Swedish darling there and they’re living happily ever after with five beautiful sons and daughters.

I love his simplicity, despite all the fame he has acquired, and the fact that he still speaks Afrikaans as fluently as if he never left South Africa more than three decades ago.

Thank you, too, to Barenese Vanessa Beaton-Butler, Carol Prinsloo, Godfrey Stanley, Advocate Lennie H Max, another great friend, former colleague Michele Anne Levendahl, and Isaac D Van Rooyen, my brother-in-law, and in the same breath my two big brothers, for their daily and unselfish, devotional, and inspirational messages during very trying times, throughout the whole process.

Prologue

I believe and hope this book will be a best-seller not only in the geographical boundaries of my native South Africa but in other parts of the world as well, for two reasons.

First, because I openly share my personal encounters as a person of colour (a little six-year-old at the time) during the brutal and inhumane apartheid system that was the order of the day back then. Readers will learn how I and so many other ordinary men and women of colour from all walks of life utilised impoverished personal circumstances and the unjust political dispensation as a propellant to change our lives, 360 degrees around, to become dignified South Africans.

Second, to shed some light on the endless challenges faced by street children of yesteryear and today, not only in South Africa but worldwide.

Since early childhood, as far back as I can remember, I have wanted to write about my life. The only reason I didn’t do it earlier was because I didn’t want to embarrass or offend others, like my late mum for instance, in the process. I still have great respect for her, and for the right to privacy of others directly involved in this saga, but I will only be completely free once this story has been told to the world.

The fact is, if God has given you the vision to do something, although it might linger for decades, eventually it will come to pass at the right time, like it or not. As an erstwhile street kid, who grew up mostly without my biological parents and without any future in store, as I thought back then, I had no option but to put my trust in the godly principles taught to me by my maternal grandma, Violet Antonio. She was a staunch believer in Christ Jesus, our Lord, but she passed on long before my sixth birthday in 1968.

When she did, the once close-knit family dynamics of old then collapsed like a house of cards. All the adult children in my grandparent’s household moved out of their parental home, to desperately try to find themselves as adults in the process. Only my maternal grandpa Vernon (Oom Kaappie) Antonio, me, and two of my younger aunts remained behind. Eight other siblings fled the nest.

Little did I know then that the untimely death of my grandmother would have such a huge impact on all of our lives. We moved out of the place we had called home for many years and over time, moved from one place to the other. Having no stability whatsoever and moving from one farmhouse to the other on a quarterly basis had a huge impact on me and my Aunt Ivy Antonio’s schooling.

I attended eight schools in total: four primaries and four high schools. Yet always, I had a burning desire embedded deep down in my being to make a success of my life, despite the personal odds that were grossly against my later dreams for life. I thank the Lord, to this day, for all the unmerited grace and mercy upon mercy, and for all the support from various sources at the time. I need to single out one special lady, Johanna Jones, who is, at the time of my writing this, still alive and an octogenarian whom I still regard as my second mum. She and her husband, the late Isak, unconditionally took me and my Aunt Ivy, both of us minors at the time, into their care without expecting anything in return. They provided us with food and parental protection, as our biological parents should have done, while my mum was on her own personal agenda at the time and just left us in the care of her elderly father.

It was during this period of my life (I was nine) that I was formally introduced to the brutal and inhumane system of apartheid. It happened when I entered the local farm store from the wrong entrance, the ‘non-white’ side. What did a child of that age know about the discriminatory laws of apartheid, or the meaning of those racist signs on doors, and windows, saying Europeans Only? Instead of entering the store through the ‘non-European’ entrance, I walked through the other side meant for white people only.

As I approached the counter, I heard a loud voice shouting, No coloureds, whites only! I ignored the call. The shopkeeper’s wife then shouted at him and to this day, I have never forgotten her words.

Wouter, you never, ever talk to any child like that. He is but just a child, like any other, and I am sure he can’t even read properly …. She then gave me my favourite Wilson sweets without asking for payment, and I immediately left the store. Without realising it, I had just become one of the youngest struggle veterans in South Africa!

I went on to fight all forms of racial discrimination and racism with every fibre of my being during my twelve-year professional career as an officer in the South African Police Service, along with the legendary Lieutenant Gregory Rockman and Colonel Solomon Samson, who to this very day, still serves his people, who ignored the animosity of most of our white colleagues and fellow coloured toadies (witvoetjie-soekers) who were convinced that they (white police officers) were better than us.

I thank the Lord, from the bottom of my African heart, for putting on my earthly path people like the late and legendary Charlie Green and Mina Green, a former Member of Parliament, during the era of former President FW De Klerk; Brigadier Keith C Meyer, and Colonel Jonathan K Mouers.

Yet I had no option but to take early retirement from a racist South African Police Service at just thirty-two, because I could no longer tolerate the gross, inhumane, racist and discriminatory practices any longer and because I reached breaking point, mentally, emotionally as well as physically.

I’ll explain more about this in detail later in the book.

But going back, that shop owner, without knowing it at the time, had ignited in me a deep-rooted political flame of resistance against white domination that lasted for almost twenty-eight years. However, thanks to my two daughters, Samantha, and Lynn, nearly three decades of hatred for most white people because of their treatment of people of colour ended in 1996, as most of their closest school friends at the then Model C schools were white.

Throughout all of this, I trusted the divine process, and I have to admit He came through for me all the way to this very day. He took me through this gruelling process for a godly reason and prepared me for greater things to come. I am so glad He did. I would not have been the person I am today if not for this divine preparation by the Great, I AM, himself. I like to compare my story with that of King Joseph in the Bible: how he was undermined by his own and how God eventually and supernaturally uplifted him, distinguished him from all the rest and appointed him as a king, apart from his other siblings. All glory and honour be to the Highest God, in the highest heavens.

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A Reflection of Justice…

Proverbs 22:6: Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

I am the proud and God-given product of a once beautiful and loving relationship between two awesome souls (my late mum and dad) that went awry due to unnecessary interference from my grandpa and other family on the maternal side. Or so I was told by my mother, Mabel Antonio, and my late dad, Hendrick Meyers, a decade and a half ago.

I believe many parents and relatives interfered back then, and still do, to this day, in the family lives of black and coloured societies in South Africa, but I suppose this is a global phenomenon. So, I assume that my parents’ case was no different, which is how they, and I mean all of them, messed up my life, from infancy, at toddler stage, and as a teenager. It was a period that could and should have