Kaffir Boy

One day, Mathabane sees black men setting up a tent not far from his house, and he sees white men exiting the tent. When he tells his mother, as he fears white men, his mother reassures him and tells him that they are evangelists bringing the word of the Christian God. She informs her son that she has spoken to his father, who believes in tribal gods, about worshipping the Christian God, as their neighbors who are Christian were faring better. The author’s father reluctantly agrees to go to the tent.

When the family attend the packed missionary meeting, only the black missionaries are there, as the white missionaries can’t remain in black areas at night. When a woman stands up to say that the people should retain their tribal ways, a missionary explains that God wants to save the people of Africa but, as they can’t read his commandments, he sends whites first to help save their souls. The speaker adopts a confrontational tone and tells the audience that those who do not renounce tribal ways will roast in hell, and the author’s father appears very angry. He and other men from the tribal reserve stand up and call the evangelists “black traitors” (60). The author’s family leave the tent, but the mother returns the next day with her children when the father is at work.

The author tells his mother of the portraits he has seen in his friends’ houses of God as a white man and as the devil as a black man. These pictures make the author skeptical about Christianity. While Mathabane’s mother explains to him that the Christian stories came from whites, so it makes sense that they showed their God as white, the author’s father returns home and chastises his wife for speaking to their son about Christianity. The father says he will cut off Mathabane’s tongue if he finds him near a Christian church, sharpening the author’s resolve not to go to one. He considers converts to be fools.

In 1967, the rent and bus fare increase while Mathabane’s father’s salary remains the same. To provide food, the author and his mother and siblings go to collect locusts, which his mother fries and serves with pap. The author refuses to eat them until hunger overcomes him. The mother also buys black, prickly worms called sonjas whose entrails the author squeezes to make them less bitter and weeds called murogo that grow near lavatories. They also get up early to go to Mr. Green, the abattoir, to get free blood that his mother makes into a soup until the butchers also charge money for the blood.

The author sees a pack of dogs sniffing at the carcass of a cat, but he doesn’t bother shooing the dogs away because he understands how persistent hunger can be. He babysits for his siblings, and Maria, the baby, smears herself with her own feces and has to be washed under the communal tap.

The author questions his mother about why they do not have enough to eat, like other families do. He asks his mother if he and his siblings are his father’s children, something he heard his father ask her, and she slaps him in response. She says she is sorry and that looking for a job without being able to read or write and without a permit have made her upset, and she is also pregnant again. Mathabane asks why she keeps having to have babies, and his mother said it is because her husband wants it.

Moved to anxiety and confusion by hunger, the author seeks comfort in the life of the streets. He finds a group of boys of his age in front of a compound with migrant workers from the tribal reserves. The boys say the compound is a place to get food and money. A hairless boy named Mpandhlani (Baldhead) tells the boys outside that they can’t come in that day, and then the author’s mother passes by and tells him to go home. Mathabane keeps searching for a way to enter the compound, and one day, Mpandhlani tells the boys to enter, and the author goes with them. The place, strewn with trash, scares Mathabane, but he wants to see the impis (groups of Zulu warriors) fight. Rows of fly-infested biltong (jerked meat) hang beneath the rafters. The boys cuddle with the men in their beds and eat the bread, bananas, and candy the men had left out “like bait for fish” (71). Mpandhlani offers the author liver, but Mathabane refuses to eat anything. The men also give palmfuls of coins to the boys. The boys undress and bear their anuses as they bend over and touch their toes. The men put Vaseline on their penises. Mpandhlani orders the author to take off his clothes, but Mathabane continues to refuse. The author manages to escape from the building and run past the guard outside.

The author never tells anyone, including his mother, what he witnessed, fearing a backlash from the impis. He does not know at the time that everyone knows what was going on. The other boys taunt him about refusing the food, but the author writes: “I was a fool all right, but I was a fool of my own free will” (74). Mpandhlani and his group are out of luck when the compound closes, and, afterward, many become pimps in other compounds, while others die or go to prison. The author writes of people who continued to call him a fool: “Little did they realize that in our world, the black world, one could only survive if one played the fool, and bided his time” (74). 

Both of Mathabane’s parents agree that witchcraft is to blame for the bad things that happen to them. One day, when the author is returning from visiting his grandmother with his mother and siblings, his mother is caught by the police when she can’t produce a valid pass. She is arrested by a black policeman.

When the author’s father returns from work, he borrows money from the landlord and gives it to Mrs. Munyama, the neighbor’s wife. She has to get Mathabane’s mother out of jail, as his father would be fired for missing even one day of work. The next day, his mother returns. She tells her husband that the next time she is caught, she and her husband will be sent back to their homeland.

She explains to her son that living this way is not what she would have chosen for her family but living in a shack is the only way to keep the family together. She and her husband had met in the city and consider Alexandra their home. They do not think of their tribal homeland as home. Her husband tells her to go to the witch doctors, but they do not help her find a job.

Christians called the New Gospel Apostles visit the mother at home and tell her that if she and children go to church, she will find a job. Although it is against her husband’s wishes, she says she will join a church, asserting her growing independence from him. She says she will follow Christianity and the tribal religion together, but her husband feels she has to choose one or the other—a sentiment that Mathabane agrees with. She takes her children to the Full Gospel Church nearby and has them baptized, but she continues to believe in tribal religions as well. 

After her children have become Christians in name, the author’s mother again returns with documents to the superintendent’s office to get her pass and to hope to find a job in the white world. She still has time to tend to George and Florah, who suffer from malnutrition-related illnesses, and to tell her children stories that have been handed down through the generations. Her tales are mesmerizing to the children, and they ask her to tell story after story.

She tells stories about African kingdoms ruled by blacks in which whites are unknown, of African gods, of animals with human qualities, and legends of her tribal chiefs, the Tsongas. Her riddles show her extreme intelligence and cleverness. She also teaches them tribal songs, which she tells them to commit them to memory. As they have no books, these songs serve as fonts of knowledge. They teach Mathabane, among other things, that good will triumph over evil.

During a bad winter in Alexandra, the author’s mother keeps the brazier indoors to keep everyone warm until bedtime. One night, there is a very bad storm, and the mother tells her children a frightening story about a witch. The children go to bed, and Florah wakes up screaming because she has bumped into the brazier, which her mother forgot to take outside. The author feels like he is choking and can’t breathe. His mother drags him outside, where he gulps fresh air and vomits. His mother calls for her husband to bring out the other children, who are also gasping for air and vomiting.

The author’s mother has mistakenly left the brazier inside at night, and the children almost die from the poison gas it gives off. This is the most common cause of death among the blacks in the winter months, as many leave braziers inside by mistake.

Maria falls ill, and the author’s mother takes her to the clinic. While she is away, the author smells the advance of the “shit-men” (85), the immigrant workers who collect the waste from the communal lavatories and who are looked down on by other blacks.

The author goes outside and begins singing nasty ditties about them with other boys. The “shit-men” get angry and run after the boys, and two pounce on the author. They drag him to his house but find no one home. Waving a metal hook in his face, they force him to march in a tub filled with feces and urine. When the author’s mother returns, she borrows a washcloth and detergent to wipe him down and tells him never to make fun of the “shit-men” again. He vows never to taunt anyone in the future.

Mathabane’s father is again let go temporarily from his job, so he decides to return to his tribal reserve to visit a witch doctor and get a talisman to ward off employment problems. He takes the author with him, and Mathabane is excited to finally see the white world.

The travelers cram into an old truck whose owner makes illegal runs between Johannesburg and the Venda tribal reserve. He smuggles men and goods, and he evades the policemen on the highways by stashing his passengers under a tarp along with goods being taken to the reserve.

The author sees the “bone-dry” land of the reserve, where people live limited lives, knowing little of the outside world. Malnutrition is widespread, and people live in simple thatched-roof huts. The author fears that his father will leave him at the reserve.

Mathabane and his father visit the witch doctor, who scares the author. He sees a human skull, and he fears the witch doctor is a cannibal until his father reassures him that the skull is part of the doctor’s medicines. His father tells the witch doctor his need for the policemen to be “blind” to his shack in case of a raid and to help him earn more money. The witch doctor says the father’s problems arise from being disconnected with the ancestral spirits, so the father has to sacrifice a white chicken to them twice a year. The witch doctor gives medicines to the father and makes him drink blood from a goat whose jugular has been cut. The father seems relieved and reassured after his visit to the witch doctor.

Mathabane’s father asks him how he would feel if the witch doctor raised him, but the author says he would run away if he were left on the reserve. A boy told the author that all the men are working in the mines and that they send money home, as there is no way to make a living in the reserve.

The author’s mother gives birth to a girl named Merriam, and the boys and men of the family have to leave the house for about two weeks, according to custom. They hear that Alexandra will be declared a “black spot,” meaning all the dwellings have to be demolished to make room for barracks for single men and women who work in the white world. Families without permits are to be sent back to their tribal reserves, but the author’s mother and father come from different reserves and it is not clear what would happen to them. After months of building anxiety, the family finds out that Alexandra is to be demolished in stages, so they look for a shack in the part that will be spared and finally find one on 13th Avenue—another two-room shack.

The author finds a magazine with pictures of beautiful houses, and he tells his mother he will have such a house when he gets older. She informs him that no matter how much money he earns, blacks are not allowed to own houses and that white people made that law. He discovers that whites are the creators of apartheid, and although his mother tells him he is too young to understand the issues, he vows to continue to ask questions.

More shacks are built to accommodate the families forced to move, and the children play in the unsanitary alleys alongside them, which no one has time to clean. They even play in the urine from the lavatory and relieve themselves in the alleyways, as parents have to take them to the lavatories. The author’s house begins to decay, and he and his siblings are preyed upon by rats, bugs, and scorpions.

Mathabane realizes that the people living in the shacks in Alexandra are refugees from all over South Africa. His father is arrested again, and the author begs for food. His mother finds him begging, after telling him not to, and she lashes him and tells him that the food his neighbors give him is from witches and could have been poisoned. The author fears dying and no longer takes food from strangers. When he brings home a piece of meat pie, his mother puts it in the corner, and the family finds a stiff rat with a swollen belly next to the bow in the morning (while the meat pie was gone).

Mathabane’s father returns, but the author is marked with the feeling of insecurity. He despairs, knowing that his life as a black man will be chaotic—like his father’s life.

Even though Alexandra is being demolished, people keep streaming in, as they have no way to support themselves on the tribal reserves. Mathabane’s playmates are often from tribal reserves, and he begins to adopt their superstitions and believes that the work of witches is everywhere. For example, he believes that bad luck is caused by the work of evil spirits and that they have to be warded off by sacrifices, such as the chicken blood his father spreads around their house twice a year.

However, as the author ages, he starts to doubt some of these superstitions. His father regards his questions about the workings of witchcraft as disrespectful, and his mother’s explanations still fall short. He senses that he will have to find his own answers, but he doesn’t dare to openly defy his father, knowing that he and his mother, who would likely defend him, will be thrown out.

One early morning, the author’s mother wakes him. He, accustomed to raids, believes the police were there. Instead, his mother tells him to get dressed, and he and his siblings head to their grandmother’s shack in Alexandra. They are cold, lacking the right clothing, and they see a naked man and woman scaling a barbed wire fence. His mother explains that it is likely because the police have raided their house.

The author’s grandmother, the matriarch of the family, lives in a neat shack with her children, Uncle Piet, 13, and Aunt Bushy, 15. Her other son, Uncle Cheeks, is serving a long sentence in prison for having burglarized a white man’s house. She rents out part of her house to lodgers, and she has raised all her children alone after her husband left her. She is physically striking, and she, though older, still works six days a week from 7 to 5 as a gardener and outdoor worker.

Granny is upset and tells them that Piet was arrested early that morning when he went to buy bread from the corner store. A neighbor saw him get frisked by the police and taken away. Granny couldn’t approach the police van in which she sees Piet because her pass is not in order, which the author’s mother had not known, because Granny refused to get married again (as the police had ordered her to do to stay in Alexandra). Granny does not have money to help her son, and she fears Piet will be sent to a potato farm where blacks are tortured and often buried in unmarked graves. She and the author’s mother comb the town to look for money to get Piet out of jail, but they can’t find any. They pawn some of Granny’s belongings, but they can’t get Piet out over the weekend, and he has to stay in jail. When Piet is released, the principal of his school writes a note to prevent him from being arrested again, stating that Piet, despite his tall height, is still a student.

On another day, the author’s mother wakes him up early, and they go to stand in a long line at the superintendent’s office. The line is already long at 6 am, although the office does not open until 10 a.m. The author asks his mother to sit with unemployed men near a fire, and—even though they first try to chase him away, thinking he was a vagabond—they later allow him to sit with them after his mother intervenes. They make fun of a group of people from the tribal reserves who are coming in convoys to work in mines. The jobless men blame these men for the problems in their lives and their lack of work. After waiting seven hours in line, Mathabane and his mother are ushered into an office to get papers for the author. After more waiting time, during which they can’t sit down, they are told the white “baas” has gone home and that they will have to come back in a month.

A month later, the author and his mother again return early in the morning to the superintendent’s office to wait on line. Men passing by in trucks seem happy, as it was a Friday and they are going to get paid, but Mathabane thinks that his father, weighed down by worry, is never happy. Instead, he is morose and unreachable. When they enter the white superintendent’s office, Mathabane starts to scream, recognizing the superintendent as the person who had led an earlier police raid. His mother tells him to be quiet or he will be shot dead.

The white superintendent refers to the author as a “pickaninny” and, in derisive terms, asks his mother for papers that prove her son was born in Alexandra. He orders them to go to the clinic and ask for the author’s papers, but his mother says that she has already been there and that they could not give her papers because the author was born at home.

The author and his mother head to the clinic on another day; it is a place filled with suffering. They wait in lines only to find out the note the superintendent had written is worthless and that they cannot get the papers. The mother vows to stay until she gets him papers, but she is removed by a guard. The mother tells a sympathetic white woman of her troubles, and the mother finally receives her son’s birth certificate. Although the author does not realize it at the time, he had passed the first hurdle to getting an education. Without the certificate, he could not have attended a school in Alexandra.