Authors in Focus: Mark Mathabane

I am going to add a new segment to these writings, and will call it "Authors in Focus", and go a little deeper into the works and styles of particular authors. First one up is not as famous as some of the other authors that I regularly read: Mark Mathabane.

Mark Mathabane is an author who was best known for his work, "Kaffir Boy", a 1980's book which was an autobiographical piece that focused on the author's upbringing as a black youth during the days of apartheid in South Africa. The book came out in the middle of a decade when the officially racist policies practiced in that nation, as well as in illegally occupied Namibia (then called South West Africa), became more or less the focal point for activists around the world, in a decade when activism seemed almost a dead thing otherwise. The anti-apartheid movement became a cause célèbre, and names like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were immortalized. There were concerts and movies, albums and much music, protests and organized boycotts, even economic divestments, all in favor of bringing down the apartheid state.

Yet, despite all of this well-intentioned activism, it was also greatly misunderstood. Many people on the outside viewed it simply as good and bad, black and white. In reality, South Africa was, and always has been, far more complex. Even then system that came to be known by the name of apartheid itself had a more complex history than met the eye. In truth, there were layers to the system, and it's history. For anyone who wanted, or still perhaps wants, to understand it more, it was important, if not crucial. To understand these layers, and the complexities and specifics that really allowed apartheid to survive for as long as it did. After all, there is an interesting question as to how a relatively small group of whites managed to dominate everything in a large country in which they were a small minority, on a continent where they were even a smaller minority overall.

It took a lot of reading to understand the situation better, and a lot of reading on the subject of South Africa I have done. It all started back in the 1980's, when apartheid still was an active issue, and when this book, "Kaffir Boy", and it's sequel, "Kaffir Boy in America", were the first books that I really read on the subject, and served, on many levels, as my introduction to South Africa and apartheid. The term "kaffir" is of Arabic origins, meaning "infidel", and is the equivalent in South Africa of the American derogatory word "nigger". Mathabane's title of his book, "Kaffir Boy", is meant to call into mind Richard Wright's "BlackBoy".

In truth, I read the second book first, because that was the one my mom owned at the time. I eventually got my hands on a copy of "Kaffir Boy" itself, yet both books fascinated me at the time. A few years ago, I decided to reread the books, and it was truly amazing how different books can be when you read them decades apart. There were some parts that I remembered, but even these seemed entirely different, almost. I would remember certain parts, yet seemingly out of context.  Still, these works were very informative, and fascinating. At a time when I was a struggling student in junior high school and high school, learning about certain things completely unrelated to school (like apartheid in South Africa) were the only signs of a greater intellectual ability and overall world curiosity that I was to show, and at the time, I probably lacked the creativity and bravery to tie these into my academic life. I kept such personal studies almost completely separate from school (with one exception that I can remember), although it could have been put to good use, and likely, I would have benefitted strongly. Alas, you live and you learn, right?

Mathabane's childhood was in a black township called "Alexandra", on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and entirely surrounded by white suburbs. It was a town that was severely overcrowded, and if memory serves correctly, a one square mile ghetto with around 100,000 people living in it. Many of the homes were hastily built shacks, which the police would often ear down as illegal (a common practice throughout South Africa in the days of apartheid), and which the people living in them would often just as quickly rebuild.  It was a world of dire poverty, with menial jobs and meager salaries, of substance abuse, violence (from both blacks inside of the townships, and the white establishment outside of it), poor education and even poorer prospects. When reading this book, it becomes clearer just how difficult, if not virtually impossible, life had become for the black majority inside of the country, and just how hopeless young blacks in the country felt. For that matter, it provides insight into just why it was very much a youth movement in the country, with such an enormous amount of youth disaffection throughout.

But you also catch a glimpse of a different world, and begin to understand how whites in the country were so cut off from the blacks. In a country where the white minority government controlled almost everything, including the media, there was hardly any real news of blacks at all, and thus, even less understanding (and thus, sympathy) towards the plight of blacks. Many whites remained completely oblivious of the protest movements and the funerals (which became de facto protests once gathering of large groups of Africans became outlawed), even when they only lived a few miles away. Keep in mind, the world of white and black remained strictly separate on many levels, and did not go beyond the relation of master and servant on any real level. Blacks were given only an education that was adequate enough to prepare them for labor at the service of whites, while whites were given an obviously superior level of education, and were groomed for lives of luxury and indulgences. There was a point when South African whites surpassed even wealthy southern California for the highest standard of living on Earth, while blacks as a whole remained relegated to the background, mired in poverty and only glimpsed this better life enjoyed by the whites while working for them, cleaning their homes or sculpting their garden or cleaning their streets or mining their gold and precious resources. Blacks might assist white police officers. But there was nothing resembling equality or a sharing of the wealth.

That much was understood by most people. However, there were layers to apartheid that were far more complex, because what I just explained in that last paragraph, though true, was also only half of the story, if that. It does not explain everything, and it certainly does not explain how a small minority of whites that was shrinking in terms of percentage of the population could control a growing black majority, on a black continent. Having read quite a bit on South Africa over the course of the decades (the subject has continued to fascinate me even to the present, almost two decades since the official dismantling of apartheid), I think I can save the room for more specifics for some later entries.

While "Kaffir Boy" focused on his upbringing in South Africa and gave the reader a glimpse of the loud and violent, as well as often the more subtle and mental, oppression of the racist system, and trying to persevere through it all, the follow up book, "Kaffir Boy in America", is about the author's escape, if you will, into the United States, on a tennis scholarship, sponsored by former tennis superstar Stan Smith, an American who met Mark Mathabane during a tournament in South Africa.

Mathabane leaves South Africa, and goes into some of the racist aspects of the society that he is hoping to leave behind him, such as the unpaved roads of the black townships suddenly yielding to the paved roads of the white communities, and then being seated next to a privileged white South African, who pretends to be sympathetic and interested, and almost slips by referring to some of the blacks that he knows (who work for him as servants, naturally) as "boys".

Mathabane has realized his dream and come to America, where he knows about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and that there is no legal segregation. Yet, it pains him to find that racism is quite evident here, as well, and he also finds that the United States, far from being an idyllic utopia, had its' share of problems, as well. He learns about the Jim Crow segregationist system that is similar to that of South Africa, and that had existed in the recent past, but has since been outlawed. It comes as a shock to him that many Americans are not as well educated or enlightened as he had imagined, yet he remains happy for the opportunity to be here throughout and remains hopeful.

On a personal level, Mathabane soon has to admit that he will not be a tennis superstar, as many people had come to believe, and he struggled to find a new identity, and justification, for his life in this land, so far away from the one he knew in South Africa. But he manages to find his niche in writing, and eventually even manages to successfully get his family to visit the United States, and to get younger siblings to come to school here, and to obtain greater opportunities, nonetheless, than would have been available to them in their native country, where they would officially be relegated to second class citizenship, at best (more on this specifically, in some later entry).

Again, I read both of these books when I was still only a teen, and then reread them more recently, as a full fledged adult (I also wrote "Miriam's Song" more recently), and enjoyed it each time, although the author does seem a bit on the preachy side in "Kaffir Boy in America". Still, they are good reads, and I would like to obtain copies of his other books, sooner or later, in order to read these, as well. He has a strong writing style, and has the power to make his world come alive through words, and was my first real introduction to understanding the realities of South Africa on a deeper level.