Kaffir Boy Family Quotes

Phineas was one of thousands of black migrant workers in Alexandra forced to live hundreds of miles from their families because of Influx Control laws, which discouraged black family life in what the government called "white South Africa." In the township, no other group lived as unnaturally as the migrant workers. Housed mostly in sterile single-sex barracks, they were prey to prostitution, Matanyula [sex with young boys, paid for in food], alcoholism, robbery and senseless violence; they existed under such stress and absorbed so much emotional pain that tears, grief, fear, hope and sadness had become alien to most of them.

Stripped of their manhood, they hated the white man with every fibre of their being. Anger would leap into their eyes each time the words white man were uttered. Rage would heave their chest each time something or someone reminded them that it was the white man who kept their families away from them. Each time I saw that anger and hate, I knew that they felt a pain so deep it could not be expressed; that though they laughed and chaffed with one another, as they tried in vain to drown their sorrows in gourds of liquor, something inside them was slowly dying.

There is a death far worse than physical death, and that is the death of the mind and soul, when, despite toiling night and day, under sweltering heat, torrential rain, blistering winds, you still cannot make enough to clothe, shelter and feed your loved ones, suffering miles away, forcibly separated from you. (29.103-105)

Impassively he stood there against the wall, in the shadow of the flickering candle, seemingly trying to awaken himself from some bad dream, some nightmare. I could tell from the look on his face that he found the fact that I was leaving hard to believe: I, his son, his firstborn, his own flesh and blood, the son he had watched grow, the son whom he had wanted to so much to be like him, but who had grown up to be so much different, was about to leave him suffering, gaunt, aging, helpless, hopeless, fearful of the future.

As I kissed him again, and embraced his emaciated body, a tear and a twinkle came to his eyes: he understood that despite my fanatical opposition to his way of life, despite all the shocks of childhood he had subjected me to, I still loved him, dearly.

"Take care of yourself, son," he said softly. (54.9-11).

I shuddered to think what life in Alexandra, in Johannesburg, in South Africa, in apartheid country, in the land of slavery, held for them. Did they have a future? Would the family remain together long enough for them to finish school, to grow up? Or would the authorities tear them from each other, deport some to the tribal reserves, arrest some, killing some? They were so young and unknowing; the same storms of life that had battered my life, warped my character and had stunted my growth they still had to face. Would they survive such storms? Would they live long enough to swim safely to the other shore? What shore? (54.20)