Kaffir Boy Analysis

Racism is rarely, if ever, racism on its own and nothing more. Racism often manifests itself in a nation's institutions, which serve to reinforce stereotypes and maintain the status-quo They’re self perpetuating and self justifying, and it proves why so many contemporary societies struggle with the long term ramifications. The life stories of Mark Mathabane and Rigoberta Menchú are a testament to triumphs of overcoming this entrenched exploitation. Through the learning of language, both are able to erode the position of the traditional ruling class, working towards change in their countries. All the while the western world continued to exploit the situation, providing legitimacy for these third world, oppressive and authoritarian regimes.

Mark’s family lived in the ghetto where is family was economically exploited by an entrenched capitalist class. Urban workers operated in an economy that required ‘identification papers’ or passports, which guaranteed the right to work and live in the ghetto. Failing to produce these papers meant workers were banished from their homes, forced to return to the tribal villages from which they immigrated from. Mark’s parents do not have the needed papers to live and work legally and were thus forced to exist in the vast and unregulated informal economy that proliferated alongside the internalized one. On his father being caught by the Peri-Urban, Mathabane remarks “His crime, unemployment, was one of the worst a black man could commit.” Work was done for incredibly low wages with many families suffering from poor nutrition and with alarming frequency, starvation. Alexandra was full with crime and poverty, with many turning to drug or alcohol abuse to escape the reality of their

A bright student, Mathabane’s family is able to scrape together enough money for him to attend public school, where he takes to learning the language of the South African government. One white counterpart is surprised with his proficiency, claiming “my teachers tell us that Kaffirs can’t read, speak or write English white people because they have smaller brains.” His proficiency in English grows to the point where he is able help his family and others to communicate with the government bureaucracy. An ability that was impossible for most black South Africans, dooming them to the informal economy that results from being ‘paperless’ and susceptible to any charge because their documentation is not in order. Throughout the seventies, language rights evolved into a central political issue in the apartheid debate. A 1976 attempt by the Department of Bantu education sparked civil unrest in the country, as the educating body wanted to switch from English training to Afrikaans. The event sparked a rise of race consciousness in South African ghettos, while their white counterparts remained in the dark about the true source of their political