Conny Pietersen plays with her Barbie dolls in the backyard of her parents' house. Behind her is Roger Granger Banda, the full-time live in gardener the Pietersens employ.
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Pietersen's family is a member of the small black elite class that has emerged since the ANC was voted into power in 1994. During the apartheid era, Conny's parents were both politically active in the fight against apartheid and Conny's father lived in exile for many years as a result. He later served as Nelson Mandela's first guard and now is an entrepreneur involved in a variety of national and international business enterprises. Conny's mother worked for Oliver Thambo, one of the anti-apartheid movement's most prominent leaders, and spent a year in New York working in the Unites Nations' ANC branch. The family recently moved to a large house in Waverley, a traditionally white suburb of Johannesburg where Conny attends a racially integrated government school. While both parents were raised in the poor townships around Johannesburg, their children are living lives black could only have dreamed of under apartheid.
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