Apartheid’s Structural Oppression Theme Analysis

Mark Mathabane’s autobiography, Kaffir Boy, is an account of Mathabane’s childhood growing up as a black person under apartheid, South Africa’s set of segregation laws installed in 1948 by white Afrikaners (Dutch, German, and French Europeans who settled in South Africa). He describes how every aspect of apartheid is designed to maintain a strict racial hierarchy, with the minority of white Europeans at the very top and black Africans at the very bottom. The government grants each person different rights and freedoms depending on their race. For Mathabane, overcoming the many disadvantages he experiences as a black person under apartheid is the greatest struggle of his childhood. Kaffir Boy’s description of apartheid demonstrates how its deliberately racist hierarchy and structural inequalities dehumanize black people and hold them back from fulfilling their potential, ultimately arguing that it is a baseless and oppressive system.

Mathabane describes how apartheid is built on an “arbitrary racial classification,” arguing that such an arbitrary system has no basis in reality. Apartheid dictates that each race fits within a legal hierarchy which determines their rights in society: white people are at the top, allowed to own property, and marry or not marry as they so choose, and speak against the government. Black people are at the bottom, not allowed to own property, often not allowed to marry or live with their spouse, or speak against the government. Although a person’s position in the racial hierarchy governs what they can and can’t do, Mathabane argues that the racial hierarchy itself is pointedly “arbitrary”: for no particular reason, Chinese people are considered “black” and Japanese people are “white.” Wealthy black people from America are considered “honorary white.” Indians and “Coloureds,” a category that denotes mixed black and white ancestry, and are considered below white people but marginally above black people. Mathabane remarks that black people’s position at the bottom of the racial hierarchy casts them as “the dregs of society, aliens in the land of their birth.” In other words, although black people are the country’s original inhabitants, apartheid grants them the least opportunity to live and thrive. Thus, as Mathabane and many black people recognize, the nonsensical organization of races within the hierarchy lacks any true logic, suggesting that the fundamental principle of apartheid has no basis in reality.

Mathabane and his family’s constant struggle against apartheid’s laws and regulations suggests that its systems are designed to repress black people and hold them back from their full potential. The white ruling class in South Africa uses numerous schemes to arrest and punish black people. For example, the government requires every black adult to carry a “passbook” containing their government ID, proof that they’ve paid all of the various taxes, proof of employment, and the permits to live in a given area, to live with their spouse, so on. If a police officer finds any issue with a black person’s passbook—which they always do—the person is either extorted for a bribe or arrested on the spot. Throughout Mathabane’s childhood, police officers frequently conduct night raids on “the black ghetto” to check passbooks, and his parents are always at risk of being arrested for not having the right permits in their books, demonstrating one way that apartheid’s laws plague black people’s daily lives with the constant threat of arrest and punishment. The apartheid government also uses bureaucracy to disadvantage black people. When Mathabane applies for his passbook as a young adult, a government official refuses to give him one because he is unemployed, even though he cannot look for work without a passbook. Mathabane explains this contradiction, but the official simply tells him, “That’s your own problem,” and refuses to help. Mathabane’s struggle to even abide by apartheid’s unjust laws suggests that the entire system intentionally disadvantages black people, setting them up for unavoidable failure.

Such disadvantages predictably result in widespread poverty among South Africa’s black population, which in turn limits the potential of many exceptional young black people. Mathabane’s cousins and many of his peers cannot afford school fees and drop out to take menial factory jobs to survive. However, they would be capable of far more if they had the means to continue their education, which could result in better work and greater earning potential. Similarly, as a competitive junior tennis player, Mathabane recognizes that although there are many exceptional black athletes in South Africa, the black tennis community lacks the resources to push such players to their full potential. One of Mathabane’s tennis coaches tells him, “You know, my boy, if we blacks had half the money and coaches as white people, we would long ago have produced several Arthur Ashes, Althea Gibsons and Evonne Goolagongs [legendary tennis players].” This suggests that the lack of resources that apartheid inflicts on the black community holds exceptional black people back from realizing their true potential as intellectuals, athletes, or professionals.

Although apartheid’s defenders claim that such segregation is “God-ordained” and necessary, the absurdity of its hierarchy and its repression of the black population clearly indicate that it is only a tool for maintaining white people’s dominance. After experiencing apartheid’s oppression throughout his childhood, Mathabane states, “Apartheid was purely and simply a scheme to perpetuate white dominance, greed and privilege,” suggesting that the system serves no purpose beyond enriching white people and exploiting black people. As a teenager, Mathabane meets Helmut, a white German man who hates apartheid and compares it to Hitler and Nazism for its ideology of racial superiority and brutal oppression. Helmut surmises that just as Hitler left Germany with a “feeling of guilt and shame that can never go away,” so too will apartheid be a permanent scar on South Africa’s history. Mathabane published his autobiography in 1986 and dedicated it to those still suffering under apartheid’s oppression. Apartheid fell less than a decade later, but Mathabane’s story remains an important insight into an oppressive and absurd era that remains one of modern history’s greatest injustices.