Kaffir Boy: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

On an early winter morning in 1965, when Mathabane is five and his sister Florah is three, Mathabane wakes to see his father leaving for work while it is still dark. His mother steps out to use the bathroom but rushes back in, yelling that Mathabane and his sister need to wake up. Outside he hears sirens, dogs, glass shattering, and men yelling and stomping in heavy boots. His mother tells him, “Peri-Urban is here.” Even at five, Mathabane recognizes the name of the police force; it fills him with terror.

Outside, Mathabane hears gunshots—it sounds like “the world [i]s somehow coming to an end.” His mother lights a candle so he can dress, but keeps it away from the window. She looks frantically for her passbook until Mathabane remembers that he’d hid it under the table, beneath the cardboard he sleeps on. A shaft of light shoots through the window and Mathabane’s mother hides behind the door until it’s gone. Mathabane’s infant brother, George, cries from the next room and Mathabane knows he must go quiet him, but he feels frozen with terror. Mathabane’s mother inches out the door and tells Mathabane that she’ll be back soon. He’s terrified by the prospect of being alone, but she leaves him with George and Florah.

As soon as his mother leaves, Mathabane bolts the door shut and barricades it with furniture so the police cannot kick it in. George and Florah are both hysterical, and Mathabane tries to quiet them by slapping them and yelling at them, though he too is gripped with fear. He holds a blanket over George’s head to muffle his screaming, unaware that the baby could suffocate. The screams stop. Mathabane creeps back to the window and sees black policemen, directed by a white man, rounding up naked black men and women in the yard.

Three of the policemen walk toward Mathabane’s shack. He hears them say there are probably no gangsters in this shack, but at least they can extort a bribe. However, George rolls off a bench in the next room and gashes his forehead open, howling with pain. When the policemen hear the infant screaming, they decide it’s only children in there so it isn’t worth their time. Mathabane stems the bleeding from George’s head while they wait three hours for their mother to return home.