Dear Friends,
A few days ago, the following inspired letter appeared on my computer screen from Renee in South Africa.

I am sure you will be no less inspired by the writer. In the midst of our never-ending mission for Empire-building, it is a relief to understand someone is out among ordinary people, spreading the word that we are all children of God, no matter our skin color, or religion, degree of education or financial worth.

Our special thanks to Renee for caring enough to contact us, and we wish her countless blessings as she continues her journey.

A copy of Kaffir Boy has been posted for your convenience.

God bless us one and all.

Ruth

Wednesday, August 8, 2007
South Africa

Dear Ruth,

I am a 45-year old white south African female who grew up in apartheid, South Africa. I came across your article about the book, Kaffir Boy, on the Internet by chance and thought I would write to you about the phenomenal impact this book had on my life and value system.

As a white child, I never saw a black child playing in my streets or going to my school. In fact, they just simply did not exist for me as they were literally shut away in black townships. I lived in a world that was almost halcyon. As you can imagine, in those days we lived in a highly censored society and this combined with no television left the majority of us ignorant of the sufferings.

It was sheer coincidence that I was given this book to read at the start of my 20's. I still cannot believe the miracle that it managed to get to me. The book was a shocking revelation and I read it in two days. The entire way I looked at the world changed.

I came to realize that I was living a lie and that across the hill was the most terrible suffering that one could endure. I actively started to engage with any black I could find anywhere. I studied the Bible and realized that the adult church-goers were not following its principles. So I stopped going to my church. In short, I became a rebel and an embarrassment.

When I went to university, I organized a mujlti-racial conference and was suspended from university as a result. I was told by the rector that, “one day when I grew up, I would understand.” I never did.

The stories I could tell are many. But the essence is that Mark’s book affected me on many levels for the better. I kept this book through all my years and when I come across an ignorant person, I lend it to them in the hope that it would open their eyes, their compassion and move them to a higher level of understanding of the world around them.

I can truly say that the only time I felt true joy was the day that I stood for the first time in a queue to vote for a free South Africa. This new country is a true miracle and I am privileged to be part of it.

Yours sincerely,

Renee
South Africa

originally published here July 4, 2003

Kaffir Boy, a voice of hope from South Africa

Between thee and me, I’m in need of inspiration, and, since it’s obviously not going to come from the White House, I invite you to accompany me to Alexandra, South Africa, a shanty town ten miles north of Johannesburg, through the autobiography, Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane.

It opens with a scene that reminds one of Nazi Germany. It’s winter of 1965, when black police, the Peri-Urban, drunk with power and blindly obedient to white authority, pound on the kitchen door of the little shack.

The father has already gone to work. Mark, age five, screams for his mother in the early morning darkness, who frantically asks him to find her precious passbook. From underneath his cardboard bed, the child draws the treasure he had hidden there to show off the picture of his beautiful mother to his friends the next day.

Not beauty, but fear, marks the mother’s face as she throws a torn blanket around her shoulders and tells Mark not to open the door, and not to be afraid, for she will be back soon. Then, she disappears into the darkness, leaving behind three screaming, terror-stricken children: Mark, five, Florah, three, and George, the baby.

Eventually, the police, certain that the children are alone, proceed to terrorize another family. For three hours, the children huddle together in silence, until their mother returns from the ditch where she had been hiding.

The next evening, the police return, pull the father naked from the bedroom, and make him stand in humiliation before his children, while the police demand bribe money because his passport is not in order.

Since there is no money, the father is told to put on his pants, then is bound and taken from the house, after he tells the police his wife, hidden in a tiny wardrobe, has gone to work.

Mark follows the father out the door, looks up the street, and sees hundreds of bound men and women being kicked and shoved, then loaded into trucks, to be taken to prison, where they will work in the potato fields.

For two months, the father was away from the family. Later, he was laid off work, and was arrested again for being unemployed. In the year he was gone, little Maria was born into a family, almost starving.

There were any number of infractions that could make for invalid passbooks, but the main one against Mark’s parents was that they had violated the Influx Control Law, which forbade black families from living in what the government called “White South Africa.” Black, migrant males were forbidden to bring their wives and children with them when they took jobs, but Mark’s parents refused to be separated. Therefore, they were illegal workers living in illegal shacks, constantly subject to police harassment and jail terms.

Though Mark’s mother could not read, she would tell stories to teach her children the same lessons white mothers teach their children in New York City or New Orleans, lessons about love, honesty, wisdom, courage and strength.

She would say, “Memory to us black people is like a book one can read over and over again for an entire lifetime.”

Mark would marvel at her intelligence and wisdom, saying, “My mother’s stories served as a kind of library, a golden fountain of knowledge where we children learned right from wrong, about good and evil.

“I learned to prefer peace to war, cleverness to stupidity, love to hate, sensitivity to stoicism, humility to pomposity, reconciliation to hostility, harmony to strife, patience to rashness .... creation to annihilation.” How many mothers around the world would be pleased if their youngsters had learned such lessons.

Despite unbelievable injustice and poverty, Mark’s mother would undertake any sacrifice to see that her children would receive an education, their passport to a better life. Her love would find a way.

It was still dark when Mhani Mathahane awakened seven-year old Mark, then called and dressed her younger children. In preparation for a long day, she wrapped last night’s porridge in old newspaper, put it in a gunny sack, along with containers of salt and sugar.

With Baby Merrian strapped to her back, Maria and George holding on to either hand, Florah at her heels, and Mark at the rear with the gunny sack on his head, Mhani set out for her mother’s home.

Granny worked six days a week, from seven to five, doing yard work for white people, but not that day. Mhani left the other children and walked with Mark to the superintendent’s office, arriving at 5:00 a.m., to gain the necessary papers for Mark to go to school. Already, the line wound around the courtyard, though the office didn’t open until ten o’clock.

For seven hours, they stood waiting (no one was allowed to sit down), only to be told that the baas couldn’t see them today, they should return next month.

A month later found the mother and child once more in line at 5:00 a.m., and admitted into the office by late afternoon. The superintendent said he couldn’t give them the papers until he received a birth certificate from the health clinic, which Mhani had tried to get four different times.

Two days later, mother and boy arrived at 5:00 a.m. in front of the Alexandra Health Center and University Clinic to be told again – no papers from the superintendent meant no birth certificate.

Mhani became so distraught, she had to be forcibly removed from the office, but she refused to budge from the porch. After two hours, a Catholic Sister passed by, and the mother pleaded, “Sister, please help me – please help my child!”

After listening to the problem, the Sister stormed into the office and had an exchange of words with those in charge. A young black man shoved the certificate at the shaking mother.

On the way home, she admonished her son, “You see, child, not all whites are bad; remember that.”

Mark went to the public school, where there were beatings if one didn’t have the necessary books, or the proper uniform, and often his mother couldn’t afford either. Despite this, he received honors year after year.

However, the accumulated pressure, intensified by Mark’s witnessing a murder of a man, brought on a severe depression, and he considered suicide. One day, his mother saw him trying to hide a switchblade. After a long pause, Mark asked, “Mama, what would happen if I were to die? Would anybody miss me? Would anybody care? Will it matter to anyone?”

Mhami replied, “Look at your sisters over there. They’ll have no big brother to help them go to school when they grown up.”

“Will you miss me, too, Mama?” The boy sobbed.

“I would miss you more than anyone else. I, too, would want to die if you were to die. You’re the only hope I have. I love you very much.”

Gradually, the mother helped to heal the boy’s spirit, and he went on to graduate with honors. Granny, through her work, introduced Mark to the white man’s world of tennis, where he was befriended by such heroes as Stan Smith, Bob Lutz, and the late Arthur Ashe.

Eventually, Mark won a tennis scholarship, and graduated from Colombia’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, where he met his wife, Gail, a white woman.

The story of their friendship, marriage and the birth of their two children can be found in the book they wrote together, Love in Black and White.

A mother wept, a Sister listened, and a boy triumphed.

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