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Act 2, Scene 3
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 comes to visit Thami. She is deeply uncomfortable because of the uprising but willing to hear whatever Thami wants to tell her. He says that he wants to say goodbye to her, but she’s confused, since he essentially already did, the last time they met three weeks ago. Thami explains that it’s different now: he’s leaving town.
During their tense final meeting, Isabel and Thami struggle to make sense of recent events. Still, they manage to overcome the community’s deep division and meet on their own terms. In fact, Thami’s decision to say goodbye before leaving town forever suggests that he deeply values his friendship with Isabel and feels that he owes her an explanation.
Themes
Isabel anxiously explains that she thought Thami wanted to talk to her about something else, and she pulls out crumpled-up newspaper article that describes the mob burning Mr. M alive. She explains that she can’t stop thinking about it and doesn’t know how to cope—she even tried to visit the location and figure out what happened, but the police didn’t let her in. She just wants to understand why they killed Mr. M, who dedicated his life to the community.
Isabel saw Mr. M as a role model for how to inspire others and fight for justice, so she’s tormented by his death at the hands of the same community he sought to protect. Because of the apartheid laws and the police’s violent crackdown in Brakwater, she cannot easily visit the township or learn more about what happened.
Themes
Thami explains that Mr. M was a police informer, and that all the people he named for the police are in jail now. Isabel struggles to believe that this could be true, but Thami reveals that Mr. M told him firsthand. Mr. M only went to the police once, Thami admits, and he was clearly confused and regretted it. At this, Isabel suggests that Mr. M wasn’t truly an informer, because he was doing what he thought was right. He didn’t deserve to be murdered. Thami tells her to watch her language: he wasn’t murdered, since the people killed him in self-defense. Isabel is furious and speechless—she doesn’t believe that an angry mob attacking a helpless man could possibly be considered self-defense.
Thami recognizes that Mr. M likely made an impulsive decision to go to the police because he couldn’t stand watching his beloved Brakwater descend into violence. Nevertheless, the mob made exactly the same kind of impulsive decision in killing Mr. M. While Isabel clearly understands Mr. M’s perspective and considers the mob’s response obviously unjust, Thami understands both sides of the equation—the community’s and Mr. M’s. Rather than assigning blame, he sees the situation as the tragic result of two incompatible moral visions clashing: Mr. M’s pursuit of order and the mob’s pursuit of justice.
Themes
Thami interrupts Isabel and launches into an angry monologue. Killing Mr. M was “blind and stupid,” he argues, but it really was self-defense: Mr. M’s testimony has already gotten five people arrested, and more are sure to follow. This is why Thami has to run away: the people don’t know that Mr. M only went to the police once. And if a white person betrayed other white people in the same way, they would be found guilty of treason and executed, just like Mr. M. Thami implores Isabel to imagine how Black people feel when they learn that a neighbor has betrayed them to their oppressors. They cannot take him to court—in fact, white people’s laws are responsible for turning normal Black people into violent mobs and are therefore also partially responsible for Mr. M’s death.
Thami doesn’t see a contradiction between believing that killing Mr. M was a form of self-defense, on the one hand, and believing that it was wrong and unnecessary, on the other. In a democratic society, mob justice is considered wrong becuase it’s possible for citizens to settle disputes and punish crimes through the law. But in apartheid South Africa, Black people do not have this right, and so they have to use whatever tools are available to them. Accordingly, even though Mr. M considered going to the police as a way of preventing violence, Thami views it as an act of violence against the community.
Themes
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Isabel tries to speak but hesitates, and Thami pleads with her to speak honestly. She asks where Thami was, and why he didn’t stop the mob. He knows that she’s really asking if he was part of the mob, and she admits that the thought crossed her mind. Distraught and helpless, she explains that Thami is the only one who understands her love for Mr. M. Thami admits that he did try to warn him, but Mr. M ran into the crowd anyway, maybe because he regretted his actions and knew he would never be able to teach again. Isabel says that she still cannot understand Mr. M’s “stupid,” senseless death. Thami admits that he also loved Mr. M, despite their conflicts, and regrets never reconciling with him or voicing his appreciation.
Isabel and Thami struggle to understand why Mr. M ran out into the mob. Thami suggests that he did so out of regret, as he realized that his actions contradicted his values. Another possibility is that Mr. M believed so strongly in the value of education and peaceful dissent that he was willing to die for it. Either way, Mr. M’s senseless death is an indirect reflection of the apartheid regime’s unnecessary violence against Black people. It resembles the way apartheid wastes young people’s lives, dreams, and potential. Notably, Thami and Isabel reiterate their love for Mr. M, which suggests that perhaps his death will not go to waste. Namely, by inspiring Thami and Isabel, Mr. M did achieve his mission of shaping South Africa’s future—even if he died in the process.
Themes
Isabel asks if the police are after Thami, and he says yes. It would be too dangerous to return to his family in Cape Town, so he’s leaving South Africa to go “join the movement.” Isabel, on the other hand, has no idea what to do or where to go. She called the police and tried to get a burial for Mr. M, but she wasn’t able to convince them. Thami suggests that she remember Mr. M by going to the top of Wapadsberg Pass, where Mr. M first realized he wanted to teach. He then says goodbye to Isabel in Xhosa, and she replies with the same goodbye, which U’sispumla taught her.
The clash between Thami and Mr. M’s political tactics leads to tragic consequences for Thami, too: because Mr. M reported his students to the police, Thami is forced into exile. While Thami can still play a role in the anti-apartheid movement, he ends up forced to sacrifice his plans and potential in South Africa, just as Mr. M predicted. Meanwhile, when Thami and Isabel say goodbye in Xhosa, this shows that Isabel has fundamentally shifted her view of her country: she now sees Black people’s languages and cultures as central to South Africa’s identity. This reflects the way that South Africans have had to build a new, multi-ethnic, multi-racial concept of national identity in the years after apartheid.
Themes
