Book #4: Kaffir Boy

Book #4: Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane

December 11, 2012

Well, I'm still not reading at the rate that I want to. But, as of tonight, my first semester of grad school is over, so I will have lots of time to read (between working shifts at my seasonal job, of course). My goal is to get two more books read in the next month...I'm already several pages into my next one, so I technically finished Kaffir Boy a couple of days ago.

Anyway, this book was not originally on my "to-read" list. I came upon it while volunteering at a local middle school. This is a text that is assigned to the 9th graders there. Kaffir Boy is an autobiography (though I would call it more of a "memoir," since it takes place during a particular time in the author's life) about the author's first 19 years of life, living in apartheid South Africa. Now, I had very little knowledge of the realities of apartheid before I read this book. I knew it was pretty bad, and that it went on longer than segregation and "Jim Crow" in the United States. I know that Nelson Mandela had something to do with fighting it (by the way, he's only mentioned once in this book, and only then he is listed with some other political prisoners of the time). But Mathabane honestly and unflinchingly shows the readers the reality of life for black people living in that time.

Black people were forced into really shitty ghettos. They're more comparable to the ghettos that Jews were forced into in Poland during WWII than to "ghettos" in large cities in the US where people of the same ethnicity gather. Black people had to constantly carry around their "passbooks," and would be hassled and arrested for not having these "in order" (gee, that sounds a little bit like the laws that were enacted in Arizona against Hispanic people a few years ago...). Not only that, but raids in the middle of the night were common; the book opens with a young Mathabane (who grew up with the name "Johannes," but changed his name to "Mark" as a teenager working for a white German) left to watch his baby brother and younger sister while his mother hides in the bedroom, because she will be arrested if the police see that her passbook is not "in order."

As Mathabane grows up, he sees how well the white people in South Africa live. He grows to hate and mistrust them, knowing that they created the laws that kept his people down, working menial jobs and hardly making more money than slaves. He does examine some positive interactions that he had with a few white people, but they were mostly foreigners who did not believe in the laws of apartheid. Mathabane is smart, and when he is finally able to start school (the process to get his papers in order is so complicated, it almost doesn't happen), he excels, in spite of the fact that his mother can hardly afford (and often CAN'T afford) the necessary materials and uniforms. Though he struggles mightily, Mathabane sees education as a way out, and his mother is fully supportive (though she herself is illiterate, she sees the value of education).

Besides being well-read and multilingual (Mathabane makes it a personal goal to learn and excel in the English language), Mathabane also becomes a star tennis player. This opens up many doors for him, and in this way, he meets white people of influence who want to help him be successful (though sometimes for their own political gains; when he is entered into a national tennis tournament as apartheid in sports is being abolished, he is seen as being an 'Uncle Tom' or traitor to his own race). Eventually, Mathabane gets a scholarship to an American university, and the book ends as he is leaving his family and embarking on his new life in a country that, like his own, has a history of racial tension, but, unlike his own, has worked actively to try to ensure rights for all citizens. When I looked him up on wikipedia, it said that Mathabane still lives in the US to this day, residing in Portland.

For the longest time, Africa has not had a very good reputation around the world, and the atrocities of apartheid in South Africa, I think, have contributed to this. But it's an important topic to consider. While all of this was going on, the officials of the country were working hard to keep the world blind to what they were doing to a majority of their black citizens. Perhaps people didn't WANT to know. I think of a speech that Eli Wiesel gave when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He said that indifference is the most dangerous thing, and that being indifferent to the struggles of others will lead to more tragedies like the Holocaust...or apartheid in South Africa.

This book was difficult to read at times. Not because of Mathabane's writing style, but because of the horrors that he was describing. In his young life, Mathabane witnessed a murder, was beaten up multiple times by police, and watched his father turn into a bitter shell of a man. Yet he was able to rise above it, get out, and make a good life for himself.

Mathabane was incredibly brave to write this book. It was published in 1986, before the end of apartheid, and he probably knew (as he expressed in the book) that if he went to the US and was "naughty" (ie, if he represented South Africa "badly," or rather, truthfully), he may never be able to go home and see his family again. I think it's great that this school has it as required reading for its 9th graders, because it opens up a dialogue about issues around the world. I was shocked once when a senior, during my first year of teaching, told me that he didn't care about what was happening in Darfur because it didn't affect his life. I played the Wiesel speech for that class, in the (naive) hope that the message might get across to him somehow. I'm glad that the 9th graders are this school are being exposed to different word and human rights issues, so that they may not be so dangerously indifferent to the suffering of others.

Okay, so the last three books I've read have been pretty heavy ones. The next book, which I've already started, is a much "lighter" sort of read. Hopefully I'll have that finished and posted before the month is up!

(to the left) Mark Mathabane himself

(to the left) Famous American tennis player Stan Smith, who met Mathabane at a tennis tournament in South Africa. Smith and his wife offered support for Mathabane when he wanted to study in the US. There is a picture in the book of Smith and Mathabane at the latter's college graduation. Not to be confused with Stan Smith, a character on my favorite cartoon American Dad! (which I personally think is far superior to Family Guy, anybody agree?).