“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again” (56). The chasm apartheid had created in South Africa did not only split the country in two, but left the people unwilling to pursue a change. Amidst the adversity, courageous black and white South Africans such as Alan Paton and Chief Meligqili have spoken out against the madness and have been determined to close the nation’s gap. Without the strength to administer a change, South Africa would have stayed in a lost state of confusion, misery, and hatred. In Paton’s novel, Cry, The Beloved Country, humanity is not only provided with a charge to change but with the motivation to do so. The cataclysm of apartheid has revealed to South Africa and its people
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With an anti-apartheid approach, both black men have been affected by segregation, suppression, and unjust treatment. The impact this has had on them caused these to make their voices heard. Meligqili argues that South Africa is searching for industrial growth that lies before them in the black South Africans and their natural abilities and talents. He has watched many talents go to waste in the chaos of the world around him. Similarly, Stephen Kumalo, the main character of the novel Cry, The Beloved Country, has been a witness to this tragedy at the cost of his own son. In traveling to Johannesburg, Kumalo was awe struck by the slums and the all consuming negative passions that his son Absalom had fallen into. When he arrives in a run down area known as Shanty Town he makes this observation, “The white men come….. They take photographs of us and moving photographs for the pictures” (90). Their poor conditions and poverty was outrageous and prompted mass photography and write ups. The apartheid had struck at the heart of South Africa and was significant enough to be photographed and look back at, yet the country itself had assumed complacency. Because of this standstill, many skills and talents went unnoticed and many poor
With an anti-apartheid approach, both black men have been affected by segregation, suppression, and unjust treatment. The impact this has had on them caused these to make their voices heard. Meligqili argues that South Africa is searching for industrial growth that lies before them in the black South Africans and their natural abilities and talents. He has watched many talents go to waste in the chaos of the world around him. Similarly, Stephen Kumalo, the main character of the novel Cry, The Beloved Country, has been a witness to this tragedy at the cost of his own son. In traveling to Johannesburg, Kumalo was awe struck by the slums and the all consuming negative passions that his son Absalom had fallen into. When he arrives in a run down area known as Shanty Town he makes this observation, “The white men come….. They take photographs of us and moving photographs for the pictures” (90). Their poor conditions and poverty was outrageous and prompted mass photography and write ups. The apartheid had struck at the heart of South Africa and was significant enough to be photographed and look back at, yet the country itself had assumed complacency. Because of this standstill, many skills and talents went unnoticed and many poor