EXCERPT FROM KAFFIR BOY
by Mark Matabhane
Though I disliked school, largely because I knew nothing about what actually went on there, and the
little I knew had painted a dreadful picture, the fact that a father would not want his son to go to school,
especially a father who didn’t go to school, seemed hard to understand.
“Why do you want me to go to school, Mama?” I asked, hoping that she might, somehow, clear up
some of the confusion that was building in my mind.
“I want you to have a future, child,” my mother said. “And, contrary to what your father says, school is
the only means to a future. I don’t want you growing up to be like your father.”
The latter statement hit me like a bolt of lightning. It just about shattered every defense mechanism
and every pretext I had against going to school.
“Your father didn’t go to school,” she continued, dabbing her puffed eyes to reduce the swelling with
a piece of cloth dipped in warm water, “that’s why he is doing some of the bad things he’s doing. Things
like drinking, gambling and neglecting his family. He didn’t learn how to read and write; therefore, he
can’t find a decent job. Lack of any education has narrowly focused his life. He sees nothing beyond
himself. He still thinks in the old, tribal way and still believes that things should be as they were back in
the old days when he is growing up as a tribal boy in Louis Trichardt. Though he’s my husband, and your
father, he doesn’t see any that.”
“Why didn’t he go to school, Mama?
” “He refused to go to school because his father led him to believe that an education was a tool through
which white people were going to take things away from him, like they did black people in the old days.
And that a white man’s education was worthless insofar as black people were concerned because it
prepared them for jobs that they can’t have. But I know it isn’t totally so, child, because times have
changed somewhat. Though our lot isn’t any better today, an education will get you a decent job. If you
can read and write, you’ll be better off than those of us who can’t. Take my situation: I can’t find a job
because I don’t have papers, and I can’t get papers because white people mainly want to register people
who can read and write. But I want things to be different for you, child. For you and your brothers and
sisters. I want you to go to school, because I believe that an education is the key you need to open up a
new world and a new life for yourself, a world and life different from either your father’s or mine. It is the
only key that can do that, and only those who seek it earnestly and perseveringly will get anywhere in
the white man’s world. Education will open doors where none seem to exist. It’ll make people talk to
you, listen to you and help you; people who otherwise wouldn’t bother. It will make you soar, like a bird
lifting up into the endless blue sky, and leave poverty, hunger and suffering behind. It’ll make you
somebody in this world. It’ll make you grow up to be a good and proud person. That’s why I want you to
go to school, child, so that education can do all that, and more for you.”
A long awkward silence followed, during which I reflected upon the significance of my mother’s lengthy
speech. I looked at my mother; she looked at me.
Finally, I asked, “How come you know so much about school, Mama? You didn’t go to school, did you?”
“No, child,” my mother replied. “Just like your father, I never went to school.” For the second time that
evening, a mere statement of fact had a thunderous impact on me. All the confusion I had about school
seemed to leave my mind, like darkness giving way to light. And what had previously been a dark,
yawning void in my mind was suddenly transformed into a beacon of life that began to grow larger and
larger, until it had swallowed up, blotted out, all the blackness. That beacon of light seemed to reveal
things and facts, which, though they must have always existed in me, I hadn’t been aware of up until
now.
“But unlike your father,” my mother went on, “I’ve always wanted to go to school, but couldn’t because
my father, under the sway of tribal traditions, thought it unnecessary to educate females. That’s why I so
much want you to go, child, for if you do, I know that someday I too would go, old as I would be then.
Promise me, therefore, that no matter what, you’ll go to school. And I, in turn, promise that I’ll do
everything in power to keep you there.”
With tears streaming down my cheeks and falling upon my mother’s bosom, I promised her that I would
go to school “forever.” That night, at seven and a half years of my life, the battlelines in the family were
drawn. My mother on the one side, illiterate but determined to have me drink, for better or for worse,
from the well of knowledge. On the other side, my father, he too illiterate, yet determined to have me
drink from the well of ignorance. Scarcely aware of the magnitude of the decision I was making, or
rather, the decision which was being emotionally thrust upon me, I chose to fight on my mother’s side,
and thus my destiny was forever altered.
