Kaffir Boy

“The authorities preferred his kind as policemen because of their ferociousness and blind obedience to white authority. They harbored a twisted fear and hatred of urban blacks; they knew nothing of black solidarity, relishing only the sense of raw power being a policeman gave them over their own kind.” 

The white authorities hire black policemen to conduct raids in Alexandra. The black policemen who are from the Bantustan are more obedient. They do not relate to the political movements of urban blacks and serve the white authorities blindly. 

“What I felt was no ordinary hate or anger; it was something much deeper, much darker, frightening, something even I couldn’t understand. As I stood there watching, I could feel that hate and anger being branded into my five-year-old mind, branded to remain until I die.” 

Mathabane is overcome by hatred at a young age. His hatred arises from seeing the Peri-Urban police harass him, his family, and others in Alexandra. This sense of hate and anger is so strong it will never leave him.

“There was something about it which made me fearful, helpless. But I could not figure out what about it made me feel that way. It seemed a mere book.” 

Even as a boy, the author fears the pass book that blacks must carry in South Africa. He doesn’t even understand all the ramifications of the pass book, but he knows it affects his family. As his father’s pass book is not in order, he keeps getting arrested. The pass book becomes a symbol of fear and degradation of blacks in South Africa. 

“From my experiences with white policemen, I had come to develop a deep-seated fear of white people; and seeing the bloody murders and savage beatings and indiscriminate shootings in the movies, that fear was fueled to phobic proportions.”

The only whites the author sees are brutal policemen. To get a sense of the white world, he sees movies in Alexandra. These movies only enhance his view of whites as violent and murderous. 

“I was a fool all right, but I was a fool of my own free will.” 

Other boys call the author a fool because he refuses to have sex with older men, for which he could have received food and money. Although Mathabane is starving, he prefers to live without submitting to others. He writes that many blacks in South Africa called him a “fool” over the years, but he realized that he needed to play the long game and figure out a different way to survive.

“‘Memory to us black people is like a book that one can read over and over again for an entire lifetime.’” 

The author’s mother says this to him as she is teaching him and his siblings tribal songs. She urges her children to memorize these songs. The memories of past generations and lore that they contain are fonts of wisdom and can sustain them over their lifetime, much as reading a book sustains other people.

“Following that harrowing incident, I was sure of one thing: never again would I jeer at the shit-men, nor at anyone, for that matter.” 

The author makes fun of the men who collect the tubs from the lavatories. In retaliation, they make him march in a tub of feces and urine. His mother tells him that he should never look down on anyone, and he takes the lesson to heart.

“I was awed by the narrowness of their lives, which were even more circumscribed than those of blacks in the cities, with whom they seemed to share nothing in common, except poverty and suffering.” 

The author goes with his father to his tribal reserve. Even as a young boy, the author regards the tribal reserve as limited, and he is struck by the confines of people’s lives. The only continuity he senses with them is their suffering. He is growing away from the tribal customs of his family. 

“The fact that he willingly, without question or protest, submitted to the witch doctor’s rituals made him a stranger to me.” 

When the author returns with his father to the tribal reserve, his father visits a witch doctor so that he can have better luck. The author regards the witch doctor’s methods as strikingly disturbing to him. Mathabane begins to question his father’s beliefs and to form his own ideas. 

“But somehow I knew that, from the life around me, there would most likely come answers different from my parents’; if so, I knew that at some point I would have to go against their will—particularly my father’s, for in him the tribal values were most entrenched.” 

The author’s father believes in tribal superstitions, but the author falls increasingly under the sway of the Western ideas around him. His father preaches that one has no control over one’s life or free will, but the author begins to doubt this idea. 

“‘Education will open doors where none seem to exist. It’ll make people talk to you, listen to you and help you; people who otherwise wouldn’t bother. It will make you soar, like a bird lifting up into the endless blue sky, and leave poverty, hunger and suffering behind.’” 

The author’s mother explains to him why an education is necessary. She feels it is the only way for him to escape the poverty into which he was born. She and her husband cannot read or write, so they have no decent way to support themselves.

“‘For you, children [...] I’ll sacrifice even my life.’” 

The author’s mother is selfless in her dedication to her children. She searches for a long time for a job and finally finds one as a cleaning woman. She takes the job, even though she is six months pregnant with her fifth child, so she can earn money to send her children to school. Although she does not have an education, she wants her children to be educated.

“‘I don’t know why your mother is breaking her neck to pay for your schooling, for the white man will not look at you any better even if you were the most educated black man in this world.’” 

Mathabane’s father does not support his education. The father believes that education will not benefit his son. He tells the author that people with degrees work with him and that having an education has not helped them at all. He instead endorses the traditional tribal education. 

“‘When I grow up, Mama [...] I’ll fight for my rights.’” 

The author hears about the death of Martin Luther King. His mother tells him that King fought for equal rights for blacks, as did protestors in Sharpeville who were shot for protesting the pass laws. Mathabane vows that he too will fight for his rights when he is older. 

“Whenever the troubles of the world seem too much, it helps to have someone loving and understanding to share those troubles with; and life takes its true meaning in proportion to one’s daily battles with suffering.” 

Mathabane suffers after witnessing a murder and feels hopeless. His mother speaks to him when he is suffering this way, and his pain is relieved. As a result, he realizes how much connection to others can alleviate one’s mental anguish. 

“Such voracious reading was like an anesthesia, numbing me to the harsh life around me.” 

Mathabane’s grandmother gets comic books from the Smiths, the family for whom she works as a gardener. The author becomes intoxicated with the comic books, as they allow him to blot out the pain of the world around him. He becomes a devoted reader as a result. 

“There is a death far worse than physical death, and that is the death of the mind and soul, when, despite toiling night and day, under sweltering heat, torrential rain, blistering winds, you still cannot make enough to clothe, shelter, and feed your loved ones, suffering miles away, forcibly separated from you.” 

The author earns money writing letters to people whose families are back on the tribal reserves. He realizes the immense pain of these migrant workers, who leave far from their families. They work endlessly but rarely see their families and don’t have enough money to feed and clothe them. 

“Tribal ways and ignorance so ruled supreme over my father’s life, and over many of those of his generation, that for as long as I was to know him, he was like some spectre wallowing in a bottomless hole of unreality, groping in it, trying, with great futility, to surface from it—to materialize into reality.” 

Mathabane writes that his father was cursed by the twin forces of apartheid and tribalism. Mathabane believes tribalism keeps his father in a state of ignorance. His father is unable to confront the future and believes without any basis in reality that tribal ways will be revivified.

“His coming meant so much to blacks, who literally worshipped American blacks who proved that they could triumph in a white man’s world, a world that many of us believed was booby-trapped with all sorts of obstacles designed to sink blacks deeper into the mire of squalor and servitude, where white people wanted them to belong.” 

Arthur Ashe was regarded as a hero in South Africa. The tennis player proved that black people could make it in a world run by whites. He was also critical of apartheid, so the government of South Africa refused to let him visit in 1973. 

“I’m beginning to feel like a stranger in my own country.” 

Mathabane read English books voraciously, and they opened up new worlds for him. He began to feel that he needed to escape from South Africa to live the life he wanted. For him, reading was part of his passport to a freer life. 

“But many black people didn’t understand. They interpreted my love for the English language, for poetry, for tennis as a sign that I was trying to be white.” 

The author is besieged by blacks who feel that he is selling out to whites. He does not have the freedom to be himself. Even if he likes these things of his own accord, life in South Africa is so racially divided that other blacks feel he is trying not to be black.

“Why burn the only things that taught one to believe in the future, to fight for one’s right to live in freedom and dignity?” 

The author sees the library at the Coloured School burning and tries to save books from the library. He feels upset that coloured people are burning their own books, as these are the keys to their future freedom. He senses some of the protests are self-destructive in nature.

“The fact that for the rest of my life I was doomed to carry the odious thing—a reminder of my interior station in South African life—filled me with outrage and revived my determination to get to America.” 

The author detests the process of getting a pass. While his mother struggles for years to get a pass, the author finds the process demeaning. He does not want to submit to an inferior existence in South Africa. Instead, his dream is to go to America.