Alienation In The Kaffir Boy

Improved Essays
Register to read the introduction… It completely destructed them as well as every other black family. The rules of the apartheid that determined where people lived meant that most black families did not live together. Wives and children lived on the reserves, while the men lived in the cities. Mark's family all lives together through it all. This is due to his mother's hard work. Even though she is working as hard as she is, her children do not see it because it is covered up by the projection of his father's anger and lack of food. All the children see is the struggle, rather than the amount of hard work their mother is putting in, in order to keep them together and alive.
As much as they try, neither his mother nor his father and provide for the family. Thus, creating relationships of only misfortune. Despite their back breaking labor, men in the cities were often unable to provide sufficiently for their families back on the reserves. Even families that were together, like Mark's, were often together illegally. The apartheid system created such rage that it created violence. Mark's father is a prime example. Worked to the bone, unable to even properly feed or clothe his family, and living under constant threat of arrest, Papa becomes unbearably mean. Yet Mark's family does manage to stay together.
All of these aspects create the relationships between the government and the black people as well as the relationships between the people of Mark's family. The government and the lack's people's relationship revolves around fear. It is charged by the blacks being afraid of the whites. Without this kind of relationships the apartheid will not be as powerful. It takes the people to create power for the government. The relationship between the government and the people affect the relationship in each home of the people. Mark's at home relationship with his family is caused by the way the government …show more content…
They routinely experience extreme hunger, malnutrition, and disease. But it isn't just the hunger and starvation that afflict them. Life under apartheid is designed to make people suffer in other ways: they are dominated by feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and inferiority. We see how suffering affects individuals when Mark decides to leave the gangster life behind and focus on school. His mother tells him that all young black men growing up in the ghettoes have to make the important choice to be a tsotsi (a gangster) or not to be a tsotsi. Mark has chosen a non-violent path, but we learn that his choice is rare. Other young people chose to respond to their suffering by boycotting the schools, or joining the resistance. Mark's father responds to his suffering by oppressing his family. On the one hand, constant suffering was a strategy on the part of apartheid officials to keep Africans docile and needy, but it ultimately backfired.
The systematic oppression that blacks experience under apartheid South Africa causes many of them to hate all whites. Mark starts out from this position as well, frustrated with the way he's treated. But his anger and hate dissipate as he meets whites who treat him as a friend and an equal. Ultimately, Mark is able to leave the destructive emotion behind him. His family and friends are not always so lucky. The hatred, rage, and anger that many blacks feel fuels the violence that dominates township life.
Race was the most important aspect of individual identity in apartheid South Africa. It determined where you lived, who you married, and what kinds of education, job, and housing was available to you. Whites were the privileged elite, with access to the best education, lucrative jobs, and the ability to employ black servants at non-living wages. On the other hand, blacks were systematically oppressed at every turn; their lives were controlled by an

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