Reviews
What people think about Kaffir Boy.
(loved it!)
(Re-printed from my blog - January, 2006)
Over the holidays, I read Kaffir Boy, which is not your typical season-of-indulgence reading. Author Mark Mathabane’s story is one of unimaginable degradation and poverty.
Daily life under apartheid, as he recounts it in grim detail, is a humanitarian nightmare. It is a wonder that the human spirit can endure the incessant and demoralizing weight of violence, disease and injustice that his family suffers. Lacking the most basic necessities, it is only by great determination that anyone survives.
I was struck by the tendency of pro-apartheid, South African whites to justify their brutal oppression over natives in terms of preventing terrorism and civil unrest. Blacks were required to carry identification passes. They were subjected to unwarranted searches, and they were jailed for extensive periods of time without trial. Family members were forcibly separated. The list of abuses is astounding.
The contemporary relevance of this book should not be ignored. Permitting the erosion of our civil liberties would be a demonstration of ingratitude—not only towards those who have fought on battlefields our freedom, but also towards those such as Mathabane, who have shared stories of their personal struggles to attain that which we have been so fortunate to inherit.