Kaffir Boy: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

A few weeks later, Mathabane’s mother takes him to the superintendent’s office to apply for papers, though she won’t tell him what the papers are for. They arrive at his office at five in the morning, but a long line has already gathered.

Mathabane’s feet are frozen, so his mother lets him sit with a group of men around a trash fire. The older men talk about their struggles to find permits, to avoid police, to fight injustice in the Bantu courts. A truck convoy passes by filled with grim black men wrapped in heavy blankets. Mathabane asks who those men are, but one of the men around the fire says they’re not men, they’re “leeches” coming from the tribal lands to work in the white man’s gold mines. Another bitterly adds that if those men “hadn’t been licking the white man’s ass” then black people might already have equal rights in South Africa. Mathabane recognizes the same “anger and hatred” in these men that he sees in his father, and wonders what creates it.

Mathabane and his mother wait seven hours in line, and then several more as various offices send them this way or that to fetch different paperwork. They finally get a meeting with the superintendent, but the official’s black clerk announces he decided to go home early, though it’s only the middle of the afternoon. The clerk tells Mathabane’s mother to try again in a month. She starts to complain, but he cuts her off and says the superintendent can do whatever he wants.

They try again in a month, on a Friday. Mathabane sees people singing with happiness because it is payday. He asks his mother why his father never sings. His father has grown even more sullen—although Mathabane and his siblings want to love him, whenever his sisters try to hug or kiss him he shoves them roughly away. Mathabane’s mother insists that his father simply has many worries because of his work.

Mathabane and his mother finally meet with the white superintendent, but Mathabane cowers with fear as soon as he sees him—the white man was one of the policemen directing the night raids years ago. When Mathabane mentions this to his mother, she warns him to keep quiet. The official grills Mathabane’s mother on where he was born and whether or not he is “a bastard” or her rightful child. The superintendent claims that he can’t give issue paperwork because they have no birth certificate on record. Mathabane’s mother explains that the clinic won’t give them a certificate because Mathabane was born at home, but the official refuses to help unless she can show a birth certificate. He gives her  a note to show to the clinic, assuring her that they’ll provide the birth certificate now—but Mathabane’s mother cannot read.

The following Monday, Mathabane and his mother take the note to the clinic and again wait in line for hours. Mathabane stares with horror at all manner of grisly illnesses and wounds, with nowhere near enough doctors or nurses to provide treatment. When his mother gives the superintendent’s note to a black clerk, the clerk explains that the note only says that she has a problem but does not specify what—it is not useful in any way. A guard forces his mother out of line. However, Mathabane’s mother catches hold of a white nun as she is passing by. The nun listens to her story, growing more enraged with each detail, and accosts the clerk until he writes up a birth certificate. Mathabane’s mother tells him this is proof that “not all white people are bad.”