How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
— That is the rock out of the mines, umfundisi. The gold has been taken out of it.
— How does the rock come out?
— We go down and dig it out, umfundisi. And when it is hard to dig, we go away, and the white men blow it out with the fire-sticks. Then we come back and clear it away; we load it on to the trucks, and it goes up in a cage, up a long chimney so long that I cannot say it for you. (1.4.6-8)
When Kumalo is sitting on the train to Johannesburg, he sees South Africa's great gold mines for the first time. We discuss the gold mines and their problems in our section on "Setting." Here, we just want to say that it's weird that this miner talking to Kumalo speaks so simplistically about his own work.
Even though he works in the gold mines, he says "fire-stick" rather than "dynamite," and he emphasizes that it is the "white men" who use these technologies, not him. So this miner comes across like a cog in a much larger machine, rather than like a worker who knows what he is doing. This brief conversation between Kumalo and the miner just underlines the fact that a lot of the black workers in South Africa's gold mines don't feel a sense of ownership of the mines. They perform a lot of hard manual labor, but they are not part of the management or organization of the mine at all.
Quote #5
The white people are training more and more [black nurses]. It is strange how we move forward in some things, and stand still in others, and go backward in yet others. Yet in this matter of nurses we have a great many friends amongst the white people. There was a great outcry when it was decided to allow some of our young people to train as doctors at the European University of the Witwatersrand. But our friends stood firm, and they will train there until we have a place of our own. (1.10.16)
Cry, the Beloved Country often emphasizes the importance of peaceful cooperation rather than outright revolution when it comes to racial issues in South Africa. So, here, Msimangu appreciates that white activists continue to train black nurses "until we have a place of our own" (in other words, until there are black medical academies). He is glad that black people can learn from their "friends amongst the white people." Msimangu sees a future of cooperation, rather than a world where only white people or only black people can receive certain kinds of educations.
Quote #6
— They should enforce the pass laws, Jackson.
— But I tell you the pass laws don't work.
— They'd work if they were enforced.
— But I tell you they're unenforceable. Do you know that we send one hundred thousand natives every year to prison, where they mix with real criminals? (1.12.18-21)
In chapter 12, we hear a number of different viewpoints on crime rates in South Africa that do not belong to any central character in Cry, the Beloved Country. Paton is giving us an epic cross-section of common points of view from white South Africans on education, on prisons, and on pass laws (which are laws that required all black people in South Africa to register their addresses with the cops and to carry identification with them at all times (source).
Even without knowing the context of these speakers, we can tell that these conversations are happening among white people because of little hints in the dialogue. So, in this exchange, there is a character named "Jackson," which isn't a common Zulu or Xosa name. And then we also have the use of the term "we" and "natives." The "we" sends the "natives" to prison, which sets up a distance between "us" and those others, the natives. So the implication is that the speaker is talking about "we" white people, and including himself in that group.
In this chapter, why don't we hear conversations among randomly selected black characters? Are there other parts of the novel that provide a similar selection of opinions from black characters?