Comparision Of Emotional And Historical Outlooks Of

Apartheid In The Novel, Kaffir Boy Essay, Research Paper

The horrors of Apartheid were not clearly explained or talked about openly by whites during 1960. No one but the black South Africans living in the hell could understand the pain and torture it brought. It was not as if the whites were trying to completely suffocate the results of their self- interest laws, yet they could not and would not fully uncover and tell the true ways of Apartheid. Apartheid was more than the laws that were passed. It was a way of life for every black South African that they constantly lived in fear of the next police raid. Trying desperately to survive with the meager rations of food they could scrounge at the local trash dump. The novel Kaffir Boy, written by Mark Mathabane, is a very controversial book looking at the realities of Apartheid.s effect on the average family in South Africa. He writes first hand accounts of the horrors and shows how he was affected both emotionally by the torture of all the laws created by the whites.

To escape the horrible realities of Apartheid was every black South African.s dream. To step aboard an airplane leaving their home country where they were belittled and suppressed everyday of their lives was the silent wish of every black South African. Apartheid was not the only apparatus that was making their lives hell, but also the belittlement and attitudes the whites held strongly against them. Living in South Africa at this time with even the slightest hint of black on your skin, you were treated as non-humans or even animals. There were many experiences in Mark Mathabane.s life that he can clearly remember were either he or his family were degraded to feel insufficient and in-human. The worst of all accounts for him had to be when he witnessed his father.s manhood stripped from him right before his very eyes. He recalls this police raid clearly, “He lowered his bony head and buried it in the palms of his gnarled hands; and at that moment he seemed to age a thousand years, a pitiful sight. The policeman playfully prodded my father.s penis with a truncheon” (Mathabane 21). All because his father did not have enough money to pay his poll tax, his punishment, so severe, as taking away the most important thing in life, his manhood. Not only was Mark.s father stripped of his manhood, but Mark and many other children during this time where deprived of a childhood. Mark and the other children were left in charge of caring for younger brothers and sisters while their parents ran from the police or tried desperately to find jobs. Mark also had to help his parents hide when the police came in search of passes. He had to take beating after beating trying to save his parents from jail. From the earliest of age, Mark began to resent and detest all whites and the black police officers from tribal home lands that took the sides of whites. He explains this hatred, “For the first time in my life I felt hate and anger rage with furious intensity inside me” (22). The hate and anger did not stop there for Mathabane, but continually grew inside him, quietly, for he had no power to fight back. The humiliation of Whites vs. Blacks continued everyday of Mark.s life.

Mortification did not stop at older whites belittling Mark, but he even encountered humiliation and degradation through whites that were his own age. His first glance at the white world is when Granny had taken him to the Smith.s house. Mrs. Smith had a younger son, Clyde, and Granny had reminded him only to speak when spoken to and call them all, including Clyde, baas. Mark was bewildered that a boy his own age could have so much when he and his family have so little. Mark.s conversation with Clyde reconfirmed his feeling of anger toward whites. Clyde explains his ideas about black people, “My teachers tell us that Kaffirs can.t read, speak or write English like white people because they have smaller brains, which are already full of tribal things. My teachers say you.re not people like us, because you belong to a jungle civilization. That.s why you can.t live or go to school with us, but can only be our servants” (192). Whites thought of blacks only as animals so they even gave them food fit for animals. One memory of Mark.s was told by an old women, “I worked for a madam a long time ago, when my papers were still in order, who had three refrigerators all stacked with food. And no children. And she would always throw away packages of meat because they were a day old. When I asked her to give them to me, she would reply, .I buy you meat, girlie, is that not enough.. And the meat she was talking about was dog.s meat” (46). The rest of Mark.s life in South Africa was filled with the belittlement and humiliation given by white people and received by blacks. This life of humiliation was hard to overcome and move on to a life that was better. Most South African.s were stuck in this cage their whole lives and had no means of escaping. Mark, however, was a fortunate one that found he had a talent and used this talent as a means of escaping.

Even if black South African.s have a dream of escaping the tragedies of Apartheid and making a better life for their families, this dream is severely crushed by the many laws and regulations placed by the whites to confine the blacks to a life of treachery, poverty, and humiliation. Without the precious document, called a pass book, blacks were unable to move about the