55 pages 1 hour read

Mark Mathabane

Kaffir Boy

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1986

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Part 3, Chapters 44-54

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Chapter 44 Summary

Mathabane returns to the tennis ranch, where Wilfred tell him the whites have heard little of the rebellion and have not heard of the way in which innocent people had been killed. The Afrikaans papers paint the ANC as Communist rabble rousers who tried to turn blacks towards supporting a Russian satellite. Wilfred asks Mathabane to tell other whites what had really happened. The author speaks candidly before the people at the bar, explaining that the police had caused the destruction and that the blacks in South Africa want to live peacefully with others.

The police begin rounding up students again, so the author stays all day at the tennis ranch. He meets a liberal German named Helmut who is disgusted by apartheid. They begin to play tennis at different all-white courts and to search in vain for restaurants that would serve both of them. Helmut compares apartheid to the Holocaust. The author’s friendship with whites earn him the ire of Jarvas and his deadly gang, and Mathabane barely escapes a tangle with them in which they throw a brickbat at him.

The ghetto of Alexandra again explodes. The author learns that protesters have broken into the welfare office at the stadium to steal food, and he does to the library at the Coloured School, which is on fire, to find books.