Mark Rossiter recently joined Fresh One (Jamie’s TV production company) as a producer and director. His film “White boy, black nanny” airs on Channel 4 on Friday the 12th of March at 7.30pm. Mark had the typical white liberal South African childhood, characterized by blue skies, BBQs, a pool in the back garden, and black servants to cook and clean. It was a life of privilege about which he didn’t think twice. Little did he know that his whole life was governed by an intricate web of racist legislation designed to keep the races irreconcilably segregated. There were no black people at his school. He never socialized with black people; never formed any significant relationship with anyone of a different race… except one. His nanny Susan.

During South Africa’s notorious Apartheid system, the country was segregated along racial lines in every conceivable way; from whites-only beaches to toilets and schools; even the morgue was segregated. Black people were denied basic human rights and classified as 2nd class citizens. Yet, paradoxically, at the same time they were embedded at the heart of family life, intrinsically – and intimately - involved in white homes as domestic servants: cooks, cleaners, gardeners and nannies.

As many as a million African women worked for white families and brought up a generation of white children. They became surrogate members of the family yet many families didn’t even know their surnames. Some of them were not trusted with the family valuables but they were entrusted with looking after white babies.

South African born British filmmaker Mark Rossiter returns to the country he left in 1986 in search of his own nanny who brought him up for ten years. He wants to find out what’s happened to her in the New South Africa, and to reconcile his own childhood memories of growing up under Apartheid.

It’s an improbable search against the odds. Armed with nothing more than a 25 year old photograph and her first name – Susan – Mark turns detective to find the woman who was so important in his upbringing, going into the heart of the deprived townships where he finds Susan and makes a heartbreaking discovery.

Has the so-called ‘Rainbow Nation’ changed that much since he grew up there? Mark discovers a society still bitterly divided by social inequality and crime, living with the hangover of Apartheid.

This is a personal and moving film about the experiences of an average white South African family living in a time of extraordinary prejudice, and the role of those people in our childhood who are significant but not fully appreciated for what they do.

About the author: Danny McCubbin is the website editor for JamieOliver.com