In setting out to understand how South African school space was harnessed to the political project of apartheid, the author explores memory accounts from several adults who attended school during the apartheid era. Her analysis of their reminiscences found that non-pedagogic areas of the school and public domain beyond school premises were places where learners encountered their Other. Those sites provided the conditions for poignant awakenings to racialised identifications within discriminatory hierarchies. The article ends with the author reflecting on the effectiveness of spatially segregated schooling, when she works towards understanding her informants' uncritical tributes to the educational and moral value of their apartheid-era schooling. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)