Kaffir Boy Identity Quotes

My father's response was more or less typical of that of other men in the yard. So when my mother and other women in the yard sought ways of escaping from the police – at times hiding in ditches, at times in outhouses, at times in trees, at times on rooftops, at times in secret underground hollows and at times waking in the middle of the night and leaving home to drift along some faraway street until the police were gone – he and other men would frown, and, with affectations of bravery, continue with business as usual. For a long time I did not understand why my father and other men acted this way, until one day I heard talk among the womenfolk that the real reason why their husbands refused to run away was that they considered it cowardly and unmanly to runaway from other men (4.11).

Participating in my father's rituals sometimes led to the most appalling scenes, which invariably made me the laughing stock of my friends, who thought that my father, in his ritual garb, was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen since natives in Tarzan movies. Whenever they laughed at me I would feel embarrassed and would cry. I began seeking ways of distancing myself from my father's rituals. I found one: I decided I would no longer, in the presence of my friends, speak Venda, my father's tribal language. I began speaking Zulu, Sotho and Tsonga, the languages of my friends. It worked. I was no longer an object of mockery. My masquerade continued until my father got wind of it.

"My boy," he began. "Who is ruler of this house?"

"You are, Papa," I said with a trembling voice.

"Whose son are you?"

"Yours and Mama's."

"Whose?"

"Yours."

"That's better. Now tell me, which language do I speak?"

"Venda."

"Which does your mama speak?"

"Venda."

"Which should you speak?"

"Venda."

"Then why do I hear you're speaking other tongues; are you a prophet?" (5.3e-46)

I was a fool all right, but I was a fool of my own free will. I was not prepared to prostitute myself for food or money. I would rather have died than do that….

Throughout all the years that I lived in South Africa, people were to call me a fool for refusing to live life the way they did and by doing the things they did. Little did they realize that in our world, the black world, one could only survive if one played the fool, and bided his time. (10.125-126)

The ordeal lasted the entire day, at the end of which I seethed with hatred and anger; I wanted to kill somebody. I can't take this degradation anymore, I told myself as I headed for the black bus stop, new passbook in hand: it contained my picture, fingerprints, address, employers address, age, colour of hair and eyes, height, tribal affiliation – it contained every detail of my life necessary for the police to know my life history upon demand, and I was supposed to carry the damn thing with me every hour of the day and night.

But how could we blacks allow whites to do this to us--to degrade us, to trample on our dignity – without fighting back? The fact that for the rest of my life I was doomed to carry the odious thing – a reminder of my inferior station in South African life – filled me with outrage and revived my determination to get to America. (53.98-99)

My father, in light of my continued successes at school, had begun claiming all the credit. For instance, each time we had visitors, my performance at school would come up for discussion, and my father would be quick to point out that I had "inherited his exceptional brain." Yet the next minute he would be warning my mother not to "waste money on school materials, because an education was a worthless thing to have as a black man." I could not understand the apparent contradiction. (29.84).

"Pickaninny has one brother and three sisters," Granny said of me, "and the fifth one is on the way."

"My God! What a large family!" Mrs. Smith exclaimed. "What's the pickaninny's name?"

Using pidgin English, I proceeded not only to give my name and surname, but also my grade in school, home address, tribal affiliation, name of school, principal and teacher – all in a feverish attempt to justify Granny's label of me as a "smart one." (30.68-70).

The remark that black people had smaller brains and were thus incapable of reading, speaking or writing English like white people had so wounded my ego that I vowed that, whatever the cost, I would master English, that I would not rest till I could read, write and speak it just like any white man, if not better. Finally, I had something to aspire to. (30.114).

Thus my consciousness was awakened to the pervasiveness of "petty apartheid," and everywhere I went in the white world, I was met by visible and invisible guards of racial segregation. Overtly, the guards---larger-than-life signs that read, European Only, Non-European Only, Whites Only, Non-Whites Only, Slegs Blankes, Slegs Nie-Blankes – greeted me, and led me as a blind man would be led to the door I should enter through, the elevator I should ride in, the water fountain I should drink from, the park bench I should sit on, the bus I should ride in, the lavatory I should piss in.

The invisible guards, however, did not greet me as conspicuously to orient me about my place in life. Instead, remarks such as "You're in the wrong place, Kaffir," "We don't serve your colour here, Kaffir," "Who do you think you are, Kaffir?" "Are you mad, Kaffir" told me it was still the guards of Jim Crow talking. (32.40-41).

We both knew that we were on a collision course. I was set in my ways, he in his. He disparaged education, I extolled it; he burned my books at every opportunity, I bought more; he abused my mother, I tried to help her; h e believed all that the white man said about him, I did not; he lived for the moment, I for the future, uncertain as it was. (33.30)

"I always knew you would end up going to America," he [Mr. Montsisi] said.

"Is that so?"

"You're an unusual type," he said. "You believe in yourself. That's what we blacks as a nation need. Faith in ourselves. We believe too much of what the white man tells us about ourselves, and the results of that have been disastrous: whites are running our country." (53.155-157).