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Act 1, Scene 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Children! My Africa!, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Protest, Dissent, and Violence
Apartheid, Race, and Human Connection
Education
The Future of Africa
Summary
Analysis
Isabel is exhausted after a hockey match and arrives late to her meeting with Mr. M. Her team lost badly, and she admits that she’s a sore loser—she almost wanted to hit one of her teammates for being too slow. She asks if Mr. M has any advice, but he says that he’s also a bad loser and would love to hit some people with a hockey stick. He jokes that it’s because he’s unmarried and isn’t used to compromising. Isabel says that, unlike them, Thami is a good loser. She reports that they’ve become good friends over the last few weeks, but she thinks Mr. M should give Thami the freedom to speak his mind and treat him more like an equal.
In suggesting that Mr. M treat Thami with more respect, Isabel clearly recognizes that Thami no longer agrees with Mr. M’s judgment about what is best for him. She sees Mr. M treating her like an equal, so she thinks he ought to treat Thami the same way—after all, she and Thami have developed a friendship as equals. But, in reality, Mr. M has to account for the fact that Thami is Black and Isabel is white—which means that freedom and success in South African society will look different for each of them.
Themes
Mr. M asks Isabel if she thinks Thami is happy with his life, because he’s not always totally forthcoming. Isabel says that Thami seems to be happy but has problems, like anyone else. Mr. M asks about these problems, since he worries that there’s trouble brewing in the location and that Thami might be getting involved. He asks if Isabel has heard anything about this from Thami, and she’s shocked—she says that, even if she knew, she wouldn’t tell Mr. M because that would mean betraying Thami. Mr. M apologizes for the reckless question.
Mr. M’s lack of insight into Thami’s life shows how their disagreements have driven them apart: Thami no longer trusts Mr. M, even though Mr. M still cares dearly about Thami and wants the best for him. Still, Isabel points out that Thami is now old enough to make his own decisions, and Mr. M confronts the limits of his power as an educator.
Themes
Thami comes onstage with his sports gear. Like Isabel, he also lost his match. However, he’s proud of his team’s effort and thinks they just need some practice. Isabel announces that she was right: Thami is a good loser. They banter back and forth a bit; they’re clearly good friends now.
Isabel’s prediction about Thami’s reaction to losing the match shows that they really seem to understand each other. Indeed, their rapport with each other further shows that they have built a genuine friendship on the basis of equality.
Themes
It’s time to start preparing for the competition. Thami holds a stone behind his back, and Isabel correctly guesses which hand it’s in, so she gets to ask the first question. She quizzes Thami on the English Lake Poets—Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge—and has him recite a verse from each. But he forgets Southey’s poetry and doesn’t know which of them was expelled from school. Mr. M keeps score: Isabel is ahead, three to two.
It's significant that, although they’re in South Africa, Isabel and Thami have to study English literature. This reflects the apartheid education system’s bias toward European culture: it teaches South Africans the history and literature of the people who colonized them, rather than their own. By teaching them that all significant cultural and historical achievements came from Europe, this education system encouraged Black South Africans to devalue their own history. This is why, in many ways, the apartheid education system contributed to racist oppression rather than helping students resist it.
Themes
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Now, it’s Thami’s turn to ask the questions. He asks Isabel to identify the poet with deformed feet who died in a war in Greece—she knows it’s Lord Byron, but she can’t remember his or his wife’s full names, nor his father’s profession, nor which poet carved his name into a rock. Thami’s now ahead six to four, but it’s Isabel’s turn to ask the questions again. She asks three questions about Shelley, but Thami gets them all right. He reveals that he spent all night studying Byron and Shelley, so Isabel starts asking him about Keats instead. Thami doesn’t know Keats’s profession or epitaph, so Isabel gets two more points.
Isabel and Thami have to memorize seemingly irrelevant details about dead poets’ lives, which underlines how the apartheid education system is totally out of touch with its students’ actual interests and concerns. The quiz competition presents education as a game of accumulating trivia that’s divorced from the current social and political climate in South Africa. If education is going to help transform young people’s lives, as Mr. M hopes, students have to learn things that are relevant to their actual experiences, cultural traditions, and histories.
Themes
Mr. M asks Thami and Isabel to start focusing on actual poems. They take turns quoting from John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” and then Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” Both of them know all the lines by heart. Isabel points out that the statue Shelley describes in “Ozymandias” is real but fell long ago. Thami remembers that, in the illustrated Bible he read as a child, thousands of slaves worked for the pharaohs, who were guarded by just a few soldiers. Isabel jokingly asks if he’s insinuating that they rebelled. Thami replies that “we” have some pharaohs to take down, too. When Mr. M asks who “we” is, Thami clarifies that it’s “The People,” which includes everyone who identifies with the fight for freedom.
The poem “Ozymandias” is significant, as it’s the only work of literature Thami and Isabel study that actually discusses Africa. However, it presents Egypt from the perspective of a British explorer, which shows how the quiz competition—like the South African education system more broadly—is oriented around a European perspective. By implicitly suggesting that Europe’s culture and history are superior to Africa’s, this dominant perspective supports the apartheid government’s claim to power. But Thami clearly sees history where the poem only sees beauty. By pointing out how the pharaohs built their statues using slave labor and connecting this to modern South Africa, he points out how both Shelley’s poem and South African politics hide the oppression that they’re fundamentally based on.
Themes
While Mr. M insists that he’s one of “The People” who desperately want freedom, he argues that knocking down statues is a distraction from the real fight for freedom. He proposes that Black South Africans can put up their own statues, but Thami thinks that white people would tear them down. Mr. M furiously interrupts Thami and tells him to pick a better strategy to fight for freedom. Thami reluctantly agrees, and then Isabel intervenes and directs the conversation back to literature. Mr. M has to go, but he asks Isabel and Thami to make a list of 20 novelists while he’s gone. Before he leaves, Isabel invites him and Thami to visit her house and have tea with her family. Mr. M accepts on both his and Thami’s behalf, and then he leaves.
In this section, the play’s audience finally learns what Thami and Mr. M disagree so adamantly about. Thami strongly supports the militant anti-apartheid movement that is fighting for Black political and economic power in South Africa. In contrast, Mr. M believes that it’s possible for Black people to gain power without threatening the existing white establishment. Despite his emphasis on reason and persuasion, then Mr. M hypocritically refuses to even tolerate Thami’s viewpoint. This suggests that Mr. M’s real motivation for defending a slower, more peaceful form of political change might be something else entirely. For instance, it might concern his need to justify becoming a teacher.
Themes
Isabel promises Thami that her parents will treat him well, but he is bitter at Mr. M for answering in his place. Isabel again asks Thami whether he wants to meet her family for tea. He asks if her family is nervous about her friendship with him, but Isabel promises that they sincerely want to meet him. She also laments that she always has to worry about accidentally setting off a conflict between Thami and Mr. M and asks what’s been going on lately. Thami says that there’s been nothing unusual, but Isabel knows there’s something wrong—she can tell from the way Thami and Mr. M look at each other.
Isabel gets caught between Thami and Mr. M and struggles to remain loyal to both of them. Indeed, the play implies that she might have to choose between them in the future. She now sees that Mr. M disrespects Thami’s choices, but she does not yet understand why their discussion of statues, pharaohs, and oppression is so timely. In other words, she does not fully understand the political situation underpinning the anti-apartheid movement.
Themes
Thami admits that he thinks Mr. M has no idea what other Black people are experiencing or what South Africa is going through. The people are demanding change now, but Mr. M is too “old-fashioned.” He views protests as lawlessness, and he seems to believe that white people will suddenly “wake up” one day and decide to give Black people freedom. Isabel asks if her and Thami’s partnership in the literature competition is one of Mr. M’s “old-fashioned ideas.” Thami initially avoids the question but then admits that it might be, although their friendship is definitely genuine. Isabel implores him to talk to Mr. M, even though it might go against the norm of about obeying authority. She worries that Mr. M views his investment in Thami and the literature competition as his career’s “crowning achievement,” so he should understand Thami’s real beliefs.
Thami thinks that Mr. M fails to understand the desperation that other Black South Africans face because of his comfortable job and his dogmatic commitment to education. According to Thami, Mr. M thinks that even South Africa’s oppressive apartheid government will eventually “wake up,” listen to reason, and turn itself into a democracy. By extension, he thinks that promising young people like Thami can change South Africa by getting an education and persuading the government to change. But Thami thinks that Mr. M’s hope is false and counterproductive. Where Mr. M has faith in ideas, Thami he sees politics as fundamentally about power, because he recognizes that the apartheid government has never conceded to Black people’s demands for equality.
Themes
Thami yells at Isabel to leave him alone but then calms down and explains that his disagreement with Mr. M isn’t just personal. It’s also about Mr. M’s decision to join the school system, which is part of South Africa’s oppressive apartheid government. Isabel understands what Thami is saying, but she still asks him to talk to Mr. M because she thinks it’s important for them reconcile. However, Thami doesn’t care, and he tells Isabel to stop giving him advice. Upset, she apologizes and promises to stay out of Thami and Mr. M’s conflict in the future. Before she gets up to leave she tells Thami that she cares deeply about their friendship—but they should only use that word if they’re willing to be totally honest with each other.
Mr. M became a teacher because he hoped to help young people achieve their potential, but Thami thinks that Mr. M actually ends up undermining this potential. This is because Mr. M feeds his students false hope and teaches them a biased, oppressive curriculum. Accordingly, because Mr. M had the wrong theory of how political change should work, he ended up worsening the problem rather than helping to resolve it. Thami’s impassioned reactions show that he cares deeply about South Africa’s political situation and views his own future as closely tied to that of his country. But Isabel’s insistence that their friendship is genuine and based on honesty shows that she doesn’t want to let the political situation come between them, as it has come between Thami and Mr. M.
Themes
