Rivetting and real

• Book: Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa
• Location: South Africa
• Author: Mark Mathabane

Mark Mathabane writes of his life as a Black boy in South Africa during Apartheid. Mathabane’s family had to deal with so many regulations and rules, all while dealing with a corrupt political system and living in an Alexandria ghetto at the same time. Its incredible to think that this is actually a book based on the real events which happened in this poor boy’s life. it explores the consiquences of not being able to pay tribal taxes, starvation, horrific manual labour, child prostitiution, numerous amounts of people living in a one room wooden hut. Truly truly horrific. Luckily however, Mathabane manages to break free from this vicious life, and win a scolarship as a tennis player. He manages to leave South Africa behind as he travels to the US, and yet take so much of it with him. brilliantly written. You jump head first in to South african culture, feeling like you could be walking around the town ships with him. It really is incredible how he evocotes so many emotions with in you, and all at the same time. I read this book when I was 17, just before I went on a school trip to South Africa to work with the poverty striken community there. And I think I was only just mature enough to read it. But I’m seriously glad I did read it. I’d like to say I couldn’t see anything of what Mathabane had written in the book, in the modern day Africa, but unfortunatley a lot of it still goes on. The book prepared me for the awfull situations I was going to face in Africa, but also for the beauty of the African people and Culture. It was a brilliant book to read before I went away, but I would seriously advise you to think about whether you really want to read it. Some of the scenes in it are pretty graphic and disturbing.

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