Kaffir Boy

Although Mathabane accepts his mother’s side in her battle with his father and respects her advice, he can’t accept her feelings towards religion. She has become a devoted member of the Full Gospel Church of God, but the author feels that religion coerces blacks in submitting to whites’ domination, forcing them to be passive in response. He does, however, read aloud to his mother from the Bible, as she is not able to read. He likes the language and wisdom of its stories. He believes that a kind of force operates in the world, but she feels that her pastor could help her son.

One of the men the author writes letters for, a man named Limela, detests Christianity. He says, repeating a common African expression, that “when the white people came, we had the land and they had the Bible; now we have the Bible, and they have our land” (218). When the author is writing a letter for Limela to his wife and six children on the tribal reserve, who are facing eviction, a black mfundisi, or “preacher” (219), enters with a woman. Limela rails at the man, saying that whites should be punished for the wrongs they had committed, not pardoned, and the author joins him in this protest. The preacher tells Limela and the author that they are in the clutches of devil. Limela throws them out. The preacher and woman leave pamphlets that Limela and Mathabane burn.

One evening, the author’s father bursts into the house with two large black men whom he instructs to carry the author to “circumcision school” (222). It is the Venda practice to send boys to a “mountain school” (222) to undergo various rituals, including circumcision without anesthesia. The author threatens the men with a knife, and they leave.

The incident creates a strain between the author and his father, and the author feels demoralized before he has to take his exams. If he does well, he will be eligible for a scholarship. His mother, ever optimistic, cheers him on, and he earns “a First Class pass, barely missing the highest honour, Distinction” (224). His principal calls him to his office to say how proud he is of Mathabane and to let him know he has won a three-year government scholarship to secondary school.

Mathabane chose the Alexandra Secondary School, which fortunately has a tennis team. It is the only mixed school in Alexandra. There, most instruction is conducted in English, and as the author has a head start in this language, he does well. Ninety-eight percent of the students in primary school have dropped out. The author has to pay for certain expenses, and he earns money by working for Mrs. Smith and with the help of Aunt Bushy, Uncle Piet, and Granny, who are all proud of him.

The author devotes himself to tennis, even going to a Johannesburg bookstore to take notes on tennis books. He vows not to have sex until he has succeeded in tennis, fearing it will sap his strength. In 1973, he begins to enter tournaments, and he meets another player named Tom who plays tennis against whites at a tennis ranch called Halfway House. This surprises the author, but Tom says most of the whites are English and German liberals. He begs Tom to introduce him to the owner, a German immigrant named Wilfred Horn, who immediately likes Mathabane and listens with horror to the tales of the author’s childhood. Mathabane, who gave his name as “Mark,” is hired to play at the ranch.

Arthur Ashe is finally allowed to play in South Africa in 1973. He has not been allowed into the country because he castigates the government for its apartheid policies. Mathabane and his new friend David, also a tennis player and good student, discuss Ashe. Such discussions are considered treasonous. David’s relatives had been part of the African National Congress, or ANC, before it had been forced underground, and David tells him about its history. It had been founded in 1912, inspired by the nonviolent philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, but the Nationalists continued to support apartheid. The ANC leaders went underground and became more violent, but they were willing to lay down their weapons if the whites would negotiate peacefully. The author’s generation looks around for role models, and those who know about the ANC seek to emulate its leaders, such as Mandela. The author is still looking for a model when Arthur Ashe arrives in South Africa.

Ashe is regarded by many in South Africa as a hero. The day he arrives in South Africa, the author is on his way to Barretts Tennis Ranch. Wilfred has tickets to see Ashe play, and the author begs to meet Ashe, but Wilfred does not think he can arrange it. That same week, a black American named Bob Foster fights a white South African—the first time a white and black man have faced each other in the ring in that country. Mathabane refuses to go with Uncle Piet to the fight because he hates boxing and despises Bob Foster for refusing to criticize apartheid. Black South Africans think that visiting black American celebrities should use their power to take down apartheid.

Mathabane goes to Ellis Park and, although the black spectators are allowed to mingle with whites, he sits in a largely black section and watches Ashe defeat a white American. By the time he returns home, the glory of the day has faded, and he wonders how Ashe and other black Americans achieved so much. When he asks himself: “Could I ever be like Arthur Ashe?” (235), he realizes this dream is only possible in America, not in South Africa.

Mathabane sees Ashe speak to whites with a calmness and control that blacks can’t possess in South Africa. Ashe is giving a tennis clinic in Soweto with a white liberal South African player named Ray Moore. Although he has not been invited because of political pettiness, the author decides to attend. With money from Wilfred, who has become his sponsor, the author goes on a packed train to Soweto on which two youths are electrocuted by riding on top of the train.

Mathabane believes he can become like Ashe if he can “not allow apartheid to define [his] humanity” (238). He gets near Ashe, who is speaking, but can’t hear him; still, Mathabane imagines Ashe giving a speech telling blacks to continue to fight against apartheid. Ashe loses in the finals to Jimmy Connors but wins the doubles with a Dutchman, becoming the first black man to have his name “enshrined among those of whites” (239).

Before leaving the nation, Ashe meets with government officials and tells them to dismantle apartheid, and he also establishes the Black Tennis Foundation (BTF) to make the game available to black children. Scaramouche urges the author to write to the BTF to get a scholarship to America. He writes one letter and does not get an answer and writes another.

In 1974, Mathabane wins the Alexandra Open, his first championship, defeating his friend David. Wilfred praises him effusively, even though he has been denied a permit to see the author play in Alexandra. At the ranch, Mathabane is able to mingle with whites—something he could never do in the ghetto.

His mother tells him she had been saved by people from the Twelve Apostle Church of God, whom she had met on the bus. A week later, her employer in Randburg, a Johannesburg suburb, registers her and gives her a work permit. She also finds two washing jobs and believes it is the work of God. She preaches to everyone about the church and brings home transients, including people who seem mentally ill.

Mathabane is worried about his mother’s mental health, and he visits her church, where he sees her speak in tongues and tell prophecies. He realizes she isn’t insane, but he knows he cannot have her faith.

The author represents Southern Transvaal at the National Tournament in Pretoria. He does poorly in the individual matches but helps the team win the team trophy. He realizes he is fortunate to have Wilfred as a coach, as blacks have a difficult time getting good coaches or sponsorship.

Mathabane’s eyesight begins to fade. He goes to the clinic but can’t be seen because of the long lines. He goes to a hospital two hours away but is not seen there either. His mother, although now a Christian, takes him to a witch doctor. The doctor surprisingly knows all about his past and tells him that relatives jealous of success are trying to blind him and that he should stop writing and reading letters for people, as that’s how people are blinding him. He goes to a Western doctor, who says he had been reading with too little light. His mother buys him a lamp and gives him eyedrops. The author believes the cure has been partly because of Western medicine and partly because of witchcraft.

A migrant worker asks the author to go with him to the superintendent’s office to explain why he had to bring his wife and three children to Alexandra, in violation of the Influx Control laws, as the author knows how to communicate well in English. When the author breaks into good Afrikaans, the white superintendent is so pleased that he allows the man to bring his wife and children into Alexandra until conditions in Bantustan improve.

Mathabane goes to the school library to prepare for a debate in Afrikaans. Reading opened up a new world—one in which, as he tells his principal, he begins to feel he needs to leave South Africa. His principal urges him to keep fighting for a better life but to be careful doing so.

The author struggles with Shakespeare but eventually begins to understand it. Uncle Piet gives him a transistor radio—the first in the house—and it helps the author understand English even better. Mathabane starts to listen to classic music, although other kids make fun of him. He wins a scholarship from Simba Quix, a potato chip company, to pay for books, fees, and his uniform. 

When the government decrees that black schools are required to teach Afrikaans rather than English, student protests break out in Soweto in 1976. The police open fire, and young people are killed. A photo of a youth holding a dying 13-year-old is printed in newspapers all over the world.

In the black world, the mood turns somber, and students at the author’s school in Tembisa feel it was their fight too. They start a protest march that other students joined, and they head to the stadium. There, policemen, mostly blacks as they had been in Soweto, begin shooting and firing tear gas. Mathabane and David escape and return to school, where the teachers send them home. Police stop the bus the author is on and force him to walk, as Alexandra is up in smoke.

The protests in Alexandra spread to other black areas, and black students, who are not in school, are better able to plan their protests. Whites, fearing insurrection, flee the country, as the death toll mounts and leaders are imprisoned. In Alexandra, mobs led by tsotsis storm into Chinese- and Indian-owned stores and looted them. Thinking of A Tale of Two Cities, Mathabane realizes that there are the makings of a revolution and only the cordon around Alexandra prevents the murder of whites. The army moves in and begins firing tear gas, and the author sees his neighbor, a 12-year-old girl, being dragged away by the police. He hides in a nearby shack and later learns the girl has been killed. He begins to think that the peaceful policies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi have to give way to violence in the cause of blacks in South Africa.

The rebellion grows. The government mistakenly believes that the ANC is behind the rebellion and that it will be quelled when the leaders are taken out. Mathabane can no longer go to the tennis ranch, and his hatred of whites grows. Many blacks become radicalized by the apparent silence of whites.

The author and his friends speak of leaving the country and joining the ANC’s revolutionary wing, Spear of the Nation. He discusses his desire to be a freedom fighter with Ngwenya, a man in his yard who told him he is too peace loving to be a freedom fighter. As they speak, tear gas is sprayed into the house, and the author helps his neighbor soak rags to keep his children from breathing in the gas. There have been several tear-gas related deaths. Mathabane’s neighbor tells him to use his brains in the fight for blacks in South Africa.

The rebellion has been crushed, and puppet leaders agree to an agreement by which Afrikaans will not be taught in black schools. The schools reopen, but many have been destroyed, and many students have been killed. Morale among teachers and students is low.