KAFFIR BOY: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa

by Mark Mathabane ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 1986

A chilling, gruesome, brave memoir of growing up black in South Africa. By virtue of physical and mental gifts--and a lot of luck--Mathabane was able to escape Alexandra, a square-mile black ghetto near Johannesburg, where he spent the first 18 years of his life. But for much of his childhood, his experience was like that of many of his black neighbors. There were regular terrifying, brutal police raids. His parents repeatedly lost jobs because they didn't have the right papers (which they would never be able to get because they had ""illegally"" immigrated to the city from their tribal homelands). The family moved frequently. The father was thrown in jail incommunicado for almost a year (again because of a lack of proper papers). Finding food was always difficult. Particularly distressing for Mathabane was the conflict between his tribal-oriented father and a mother who wanted her son to get a western education. In fact, schooling became Mathabane's ticket out of South Africa. (To get the birth certificate necessary for school registration, his mother spent a year going from government office to office and received it only because a compassionate white woman ordered a subordinate to give it to her.) Mathabane learned English and Afrikaans, and each year he was the best pupil in his class. Eventually he received a scholarship to attend a black high school, where he took up tennis. When he became one of the sport's best players in South Africa, he met American star Stall Smith, who helped Mathabane get a tennis scholarship to Limestone College in South Carolina. Now 26 and a journalist in New York, Mathabane provides a straightforward, harrowing account of apartheid as it is practiced--a haphazard system that aims for the degradation, humiliation, and ignorance of non-whites.

Pub Date: April 10, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION