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The death of Nelson Mandela - my hero and the world's icon - brings to the surface the deep shame I have carried with me for all of my adult life. I was once a typical white South African - privileged and spoiled - who learned by example to treat with disregard the needs and feelings of black people.

Having spent 29 years living under the apartheid regime before immigrating to Canada almost 40 years ago, it is with pain and penetrating regret that I reflect upon my experience and transgressions.

Our typical South African household employed two servants whose salaries were shamefully low, as was the practice at the time. One of our servants was a lady named Nancy Sampson, a "colored" (mixed race) woman who spent 22 years of her life taking care of our family with the utmost love and devotion before she passed away in her 50s.

In my family - your garden-variety white South African family of yesteryear - there was never any discussion about the meaning or impact of racial discrimination in South Africa. Apartheid was neither discussed nor questioned. As a child and as a teenager, I did not possess the insight to remove the 'blinkers' from my eyes, and it was only in my 20s that I began to awaken from the slumber so ingeniously instilled in my family and me by the apartheid regime.

I try hard not to think how many times during my teenage years that Nancy asked me to stop what I was doing for a moment in order to help her with something. But how could I have helped? I was far too busy luxuriating in the pleasures reserved for white South Africans. The South Africa in which I grew up did not teach me to look beyond my own self-serving needs when interacting with 'non-white' people. I would never have dared to refuse to help a white adult.

I cringe when I think about the 10-foot-square room in which my beloved Nancy (like millions of other servants) spent so much of her life. It was a tiny, dark, cluttered room with a tiny window and no bathroom. The room served as her bedroom, living room, kitchen and dining room, and it was located in the backyard of our lovely home - the one with the swimming pool on the half-acre property.

The vivid picture of these appalling living quarters remains indelibly imprinted in my mind's eye, and leaves me feeling heart-sore and ashamed.

Miraculously, in my early 20s, I began to emerge from my stupor and began to see and feel, at the very deepest level, the horrors perpetrated in the name of "apartheid laws." I began to see the self-indulgent carelessness I displayed and the blatant cruelty with which black people in South Africa were treated on a daily basis.

Like most non-white South Africans with live-in positions, Nancy had a home to which she returned on her days off (of which there were so few, as was typical at that time). One day I offered to give her a ride since it was raining. When we were almost there, she asked me to drop her off a little distance away. Not wanting her to have to walk in the rain, I ignored her request, but instantly regretted this when I realized that I had taken away what little dignity she could salvage. Her home was a small, corrugated iron shanty inhabited by who-knows-how-many of her family members.

I remember how, in earlier years, Nancy used to tell me (if I took the time to listen) that they were "waiting for a council house," whatever that meant. How would I know? I never stopped to ask! Of course, they never got this council house.

Why, oh why, didn't I hear the plea behind that piece of information? Why didn't I listen? Why didn't I try to help?

By acknowledging and openly sharing my lack of moral consciousness and my blatant disregard for the needs and feelings of the black people in South Africa, I try to sooth my own inner wounds of sorrow and regret. I have learned to forgive myself, but the memories of my failure to challenge the glaring injustices of the apartheid laws still elicit feelings of shame.

I know that for our family, leaving South Africa was the right decision. My biggest reward came in a strange package many years later. My daughter, who was attending graduate school in Buffalo, N.Y., talked frequently about her close friend and fellow student, Sharon. I met Sharon for the first time at their graduation ceremony. Sharon is a black woman. Her color was of such irrelevance to my daughter that she had never even thought to mention it to me.

My children are indeed "color blind," and I will never take this for granted.

- Adele Gould

Originally from South Africa, Adele Gould is a retired social worker who's passionate about writing. Her blog includes several pieces that have been published in the Globe and Mail in Canada. Adele and her second husband, together 27 years, have eight children and four grandchildren between them. Besides a writer, she's a woodcarver, avid photographer and volunteer.