Mother to Mother: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Mandisa’s choice to wait to recount the crime until the very end of the novel suggests that she has been building up the courage to piece together how her son became a murderer—something that weighs particularly heavily on her in a community that believes parents should be held responsible for their children’s actions. In this passage, she points to what is really responsible for the way her son turned out: institutionalized racism, which ensures that black South Africans remain impoverished, disenfranchised, and downtrodden, with no hope for a better life.

Even though Mxolisi’s murder of the girl is the central event in Mother to Mother, Mandisa doesn’t actually recount it until the very end of the novel. By holding off until this moment, Mandisa makes the murder seem all the more dramatic and tragic. The fact that she has been building up the suspense and tension until this moment also echoes the crime itself; after centuries of oppression under colonialism and decades of oppression under apartheid, the crime appears like a sudden bursting forth of anger and frustration. The chant “one settler, one bullet!” reminds the rioters of their shared history of pain and oppression, inciting them to action.

Like in the novel, the real-life Girl, Amy Biehl, was attacked while in the car and was stabbed repeatedly and fatally. The phrase “she’s just a university student” also points to Amy’s status as a Fulbright scholar who was in South Africa to help prepare for the first democratic election. Under a brutal government that sees the world as black and white (literally), Mxolisi and his gang do too, and immediately conflate this white woman with the white oppressor. Thus it doesn’t matter if she’s innocent or an ally to the community, because Mxolisi and his gang’s worldview doesn’t have room for this kind of nuance—they “know nothing of universities.” This line is also a reminder that black South Africans are afforded a second-rate education under apartheid.

This passage encompasses all three of the novel’s major themes. First, Mandisa suggests that the legacy of colonialism and apartheid is devastating and inescapable—even before birth, Mxolisi couldn’t escape it. Secondly, Mandisa points out how the entire community failed in their obligation to keep Mxolisi on a more productive path, instead instilling him with bloodthirstiness and passion. Lastly, Mandisa draws on the chant that has punctuated the novel most frequently—“AmaBhulu, azizinja!”—to remind readers that chants such as this one have been passed down from generation to generation, thus making people like Mxolisi feel that his fight against the government is also his ancestors’ fight.

In drawing on the backstory of her life and her son’s life, the current political climate and the past one, Mandisa seeks to clarify and explain her son’s crime rather than justify it. In her letters to the Mother and her rehashing of the Nongqawuse myth, Mandisa illustrates the ragged emotional and political landscape that her people—and her son—grew up in and implies that anyone with Mxolisi’s life experiences would have turned out just as angry, hardened, and politically radicalized, like a “sharpened arrow” itching to be launched at the oppressor.