Kaffir Boy Chapter 46 Summary

  • Mark meets Andre Zietsman and he becomes a good friend.
  • Andre is a rising tennis star and he takes Mark under his wing. They begin to meet on Saturday mornings to play tennis, even though it's dangerous for them to meet where they play.
  • Andre tells him about what it was like in the United States, and how he struggled at first to accept a non-segregated society. There, he says, blacks vote and can be elected to political positions. The laws say all men are created equal and should be judged by merit.
  • Mark had heard all this but still found it hard to believe there was a place where blacks weren't regulated by laws.
  • Andre asks him to imagine Johannesburg without any legislation so that no matter what color you were, you could live wherever you wanted. Mark still can't believe life is like that somewhere.
  • Andre grew up in privilege and wealth, and assumed it was the way it should be. He believed that blacks were being punished for sins committed by Ham (in the Bible, Ham is one of Noah's sons.)
  • But in America, Andre saw another reality. Some of his teachers were black. Some of the students who slept in his dormitory were black. He played tennis with blacks and discovered they were the best athletes ever. Most shocking to Andre was the fact that blacks and whites went to the same parties and even date, get married.
  • Mark starts salivating over what he hears. He wonders if he'll ever make it to the Promised Land.