Kaffir Boy :: essays papers

Kaffir BoySlaves in Their Homes Sirens blared, voices screamed and shouted, wood roughened and windows shattered, children bawled, dogs barked and footsteps pounded(7). This scene is from the autobiography Kaffir Boy written by cicatrice Mathabane. That is one of the scenes he had to experience through every morning in apartheid southeastward Africa. Apartheid is a policy of segregation and economic discrimination against non-whites. Apartheid musical arrangement affected every black soulfulness living in South Africa during that time. It forced blacks to become slaves in their take country. The system forced blacks to live in unsanitary environments, work-degrading jobs and carry passes, and receive limited education. Blacks and whites were living in different sections during apartheid. While whites lived comfortable lives in their extravagant mansions and driving their cipher cars blacks had to live in a disease infested neighborhood with no electrical energy or in door plumbing. Approximately one thousand mickle lived in shacks that were squeezed together in a one-mile zone. The alleys were filled with dirt, rats, human raddled and diseases. Blacks lived in houses made of old whitewash, a leaking ceiling of rusted Inx propped up by a thin wall of crumbling adobe bricks, two precise windows made of cardboard and pieces of glass, a creaky, termite-eaten door low for a person of average height to pass through...and a floor made of patches of cementum earth(31). Living in such a degrading environment kills self-esteem, lowers work ethic and leaves no hope for the future. Degrading low compensable jobs were the only jobs available for black men. Women worked as servants for whites. Men had to work in mines, clean up toilets or work as police officers abusing their own people. Shit-men-belligerent immigrant workers who, because of what they did, were looked upon by many black people-went about the communal lavatories picking up buckets of excrement(83). Working as servants for whites was one of the better jobs for black women. Blacks could non walk around freely in their own country without carrying a passbook. Without a passbook, blacks could non work or travel. The passbook had to be give for by black families who did not have any money. They were arrested and put in jail if their passbooks were not in order. Blacks were trapped with no way out, not even the hope of education.