Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane

First published: 1986; illustrated

Subjects: Adolescents, athletes, and race and ethnicity

Type of work: Autobiography

Time of work: March 21, 1960, to September 16, 1978

Recommended Ages: 15-18

Locale: The shantytown of Alexandra, near Johannesburg, South Africa

Principal Personages:

• Johannes (later Mark) Mathabane, the oldest son of a poor black family in urban South Africa
• Magdelene Mathabane, his mother
• Jackson Mathabane, his father
• Granny, his maternal grandmother, a gardener for wealthy white people
• Florah, his younger sister
• George, his younger brother
• Arthur Ashe, a black American tennis champion
• Stan Smith, a white American tennis champion

Form and Content

Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa delivers on all the promises made by its subtitle. It traces Mathabane’s own story growing up in a very poor black family in the segregated Bantu township of Alexandra, near Johannesburg, following him from his birth in 1960 until 1978, when he boards a plane for the United States and college. The story is told in straightforward chronological order, in the first person, in fifty-four short chapters. Dialogue and description bring characters and settings to life—so well, in fact, that the sixteen black-and-white photographs do not add much to the prose.

In the first of three parts, “Passport to Alexandra,” a clear sense of life in South Africa’s black townships evolves. As the action begins, Johannes is awakened by shouting and banging. The police are making early-morning rounds, ostensibly to look for people who do not have the proper passbooks, which every black South African must carry, but also randomly to beat, loot, and vandalize. Johannes, just five years old, must look after Florah and George, his younger siblings, and face down the police. The scene is typical of the brutal ugliness of the boy’s life. His family lives in a rough shack with no heat, water, or electricity. Johannes’ father, Jackson, is imprisoned several times without a trial; when he is out of prison and working, he earns little money and spends most it on drinking and gambling. Often, Johannes and the children have only insects and grain to eat, and their mother, Magdelene, has less. Both parents are desperate for a way out of their misery. Jackson believes that clinging to traditional Tsonga customs and beliefs will bring some stability, if not comfort, while Magdelene finds her escape in an evangelical Christian church. Johannes rejects both belief systems.

In part 2, “Passport to Knowledge,” Johannes begins to find his own way. After a long struggle with unsympathetic bureaucrats, his mother has obtained a birth certificate for Johannes, so that he may enroll in school. It is only through the determined assistance of a white woman that the certificate is granted. (Throughout the next decade, Johannes will learn to trust those white people who earn that trust—a position that will put him at odds with others in his community.) At first a reluctant student, preferring to hang out with other boys instead of attending school, Johannes soon sees that an education could help him escape violence and early death. He is bright and becomes an excellent scholar. One of his grandmother’s white employers gives him cast-off books, and his mother takes in laundry in order to pay school fees. Johannes’ father disapproves and will not help him in any way; once, he even burns the books that he thinks are driving his son away from him.

“Passport to Freedom” opens just after Granny’s white employer has given Johannes an old wooden tennis racket. He soon discovers an aptitude for the game and eventually finds a job playing at a tennis club with liberal white people. Tournament play in South Africa, like everything else, is strictly segregated, but Johannes, who now calls himself Mark, is able to watch a match between American players Arthur Ashe (the first free black man Mark has ever seen) and Stan Smith. Smith befriends Mark, offers financial support, and arranges for him to receive a college tennis scholarship in the United States.

Critical Context

The book to which Kaffir Boy is most frequently compared is Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land (1965), a chilling story of Brown’s own youth in Harlem. The two books share a grim tone overlaid with faint hope, strong language, and horrible but clearly authentic details of poverty existing side by side with plenty. For both young men, it is finally a college education that makes escape to a better world possible. The fascinating irony lies in examining the changes brought about in the United States and South Africa since the appearance of these books.

Mark Mathabane was surprised to learn, after settling in the United States, that black and white people did not mingle freely even in a free country and that his acceptance of white people was still controversial. His sequel to Kaffir Boy, entitled Kaffir Boy in America: An Encounter with Apartheid (1989), explores these issues further, as does a book that he cowrote with wife Gail, who is white: Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love over Prejudice and Taboo (1992).