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Tsotsi
the destruction of Sophiatown, a predominantly Black suburb
INTR
INTRODUCTION
ODUCTION of Johannesburg. Police forced the population of Sophiatown
to move in 1955 and subsequently destroyed the suburb,
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF ATHOL FUGARD because they thought it was too close to a white neighborhood.
Athol Fugard was born in 1932 in Middelburg, in the Eastern The character Miriam’s husband disappears while taking part in
Cape of South Africa. His father was an Englishman, while his a bus boycott, which may be a reference to the famous 1957
mother was an Afrikaner, a member of South Africa’s white Alexandra bus boycott, in which Black workers in Alexandra—a
minority population whose mostly Dutch ancestors colonized segregated Black neighborhood of Johannesburg—were
the country in the 18th century. After attending but not protesting increased bus fares that would disproportionately
graduating from the University of Cape Town, he worked affect poor Black workers. Finally, a newspaper salesman in the
outside South Africa in 1953 and 1954, during which time he novel mentions that “they” have “shot a hole in the moon,”
began writing. After returning to South Africa, Fugard worked which may be a reference to the first time a man-made object
as a clerk in a Native Commissioners’ Court—a court where landed on the moon—the USSR’s Luna 2, which hit the moon in
white judges passed judgments on Black South Africans—and September 1959.
came to realize how racist South Africa’s laws and society were.
Fugard married the actress Sheila Meiring in 1956 and in 1957, RELATED LITERARY WORKS
they settled in Johannesburg. In the late 1950s, Fugard wrote
several plays that took South African racism as a theme and Athol Fugard is more famous as a playwright than as a
worked with Black South African actors to produce them. From novelist—he has written dozens of plays but only one novel,
1960 to 1962, while also writing his famous early play The Tsotsi. Like Tsotsi, many of Fugard’s plays criticize South African
Blood Knot (1961), Fugard drafted the novel that would become apartheid, a social system operating from the late 1940s to
Tsotsi. He did not try to publish it, however, and after ceasing early 1990s that legally enforced racial segregation and
work on it, he refocused on his playwriting. In 1973, the discrimination against non-white South Africans. For example,
National English Literary Museum (NELM)—a museum for his early play The Blood Knot (1961), which he wrote while he
South African literature in Grahamstown, South Africa—began was also drafting Tsotsi, shows how racism and colorism under
collecting Fugard’s manuscripts and papers. NELM’s Fugard apartheid harm two South African half-brothers, one who has
collection ultimately included the unpublished drafts of Tsotsi. dark skin and one who can pass for white. Another famous
In the late 1970s, a South African English professor named white South African author whose works criticize anti-Black
Stephen Gray found Tsotsi in NELM and persuaded Fugard to racism under apartheid is Nadine Gordimer, who won the
let him revise it for publication. Tsotsi was finally published in Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Like Tsotsi, her novel
1980. Although Tsotsi is Fugard’s only novel, Fugard has Burger’s Daughter (1979) represents how apartheid harms and
continued writing plays continuously from the late 1950s destroys South African families. Meanwhile, a novel with similar
through the present day. themes to Tsotsi in a different cultural context is the African
American novelist Richard Wright’s NativNativee Son (1940). Just as
Tsotsi shows how South African apartheid forces some Black
HISTORICAL CONTEXT South Africans into crime, so Nativ
Nativee Son represents how anti-
Athol Fugard wrote Tsotsi while South Africa was still under Black racism in the 1930s United States compels its
apartheid, a set of racist laws active between the late 1940s protagonist Bigger Thomas to commit acts of violence.
and early 1990s that divided the population into four racial
groups (white; Indian; Coloured, meaning mixed race; and KEY FACTS
African/Black), enforced racial segregation, and limited the
rights of non-white South Africans. Tsotsi makes repeated • Full Title: Tsotsi
reference to horrifying events that occurred under apartheid. • When Written: 1960–1962
For example, Black South Africans had to carry passes when • Where Written: England, South Africa
they entered “white” areas. Otherwise, they could be arrested
• When Published: 1980
and incarcerated. Although the novel never states exactly
where or when the action occurs, several historical references • Literary Period: Postmodernism
suggest it takes place in the late 1950s in Johannesburg. The • Genre: Novel, Realism
protagonist Tsotsi hides the baby he adopts in the ruins of a • Setting: South Africa
demolished Black neighborhood, which may be a reference to • Climax: Tsotsi dies trying to save the baby he has adopted.

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• Antagonist: Apartheid waiting for him in the street. Butcher and Die Aap bother Tsotsi
• Point of View: Third Person about the gang’s plan for the night until he tells them they’ll go
to the city. In the city, Tsotsi identifies a target, a beggar named
EXTRA CREDIT Morris Tshabalala who lost his legs in a mining accident and
moves around on his hands. While stalking Morris, however,
Winning Adaptation: In 2005, South African director Gavin
Tsotsi realizes he feels sympathy for his victim. Instead of killing
Hood adapted Tsotsi into a movie, which won the Academy
Morris, he has a long conversation with him. When Morris asks
Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Tsotsi why Tsotsi has to kill him, Tsotsi realizes he doesn’t have
to and spares Morris’s life.
Religious Outtake: Athol Fugard’s original notes for Tsotsi
On Sunday morning, Tsotsi goes to check on the baby in the
include plans for a dramatic scene in which Tsotsi enters a
ruins. Ants have swarmed the opened condensed milk tin and
church, threatens a priest, and defiles a cross. This scene did
the baby’s shoebox. Tsotsi kills the ants on the baby’s face,
not make it into the published version of the novel.
bundles the baby up, and leaves.
Down the street from Tsotsi’s room, people are filling buckets
PL
PLO
OT SUMMARY at a communal water tap. Among them is a young mother,
Miriam Ngidi, and her baby. After Miriam returns to her room,
Four Black South African gang members—Tsotsi, Boston, she hears a knock on the door. When she opens it, Tsotsi forces
Butcher, and Die Aap—are sitting in Tsotsi’s room, waiting for his way inside and threatens to kill her baby if she doesn’t
night, when Tsotsi suggests they kill a man on the train. Sadistic cooperate with him. He brings her to his room and demands
Butcher and stupid Die Aap agree. Intellectual, cowardly she breastfeed the baby he has adopted. After Miriam cleans
Boston resists for a moment but eventually submits. The men and breastfeeds the baby, she asks where his mother is. When
murder a worker, Gumboot Dhlamini, who left his wife behind Tsotsi doesn’t answer, Miriam says that “a bitch in a backyard
to work in the city and had almost earned enough to return to would look after its puppies better” and leaves.
her.
This incident triggers a flashback in Tsotsi. In the flashback,
After the murder, Boston vomits. The gang goes to a shebeen Tsotsi is a 10-year-old named David, living with his mother and
where they and a drunk woman are the only customers. Tsotsi a yellow dog pregnant with puppies. His mother tells him that
thinks how he hates Boston, because Boston asks questions after a long absence, his father will be returning the next day.
about his past that Tsotsi doesn’t know the answers to—Tsotsi That night, David wakes up to policemen raiding the
has no memories of childhood. Butcher and Die Aap take the neighborhood. They break down his family’s door. One
drunk woman outside and rape her. Alone with Tsotsi, Boston policeman demands his mother’s pass and calls her a slur.
asks him whether he feels sympathy for the gang’s victims, asks Before she can answer, the police drag her outside and put her
about Tsotsi’s past, and, finally, whispers that Tsotsi must have a in a van. When the vans are full, the police drive away. The next
soul. Tsotsi attacks him. Butcher and Die Aap reenter the morning, David falls asleep and wakes to someone pounding on
shebeen and pull Tsotsi off Boston. Tsotsi leaves. the door and yelling the name “Tondi.” David runs and hides in
Boston’s words echo in Tsotsi’s mind. To distract himself, he the back yard. He hears the intruder come into the yard. The
runs until he’s exhausted and stops under some bluegum trees yellow dog snarls at the intruder, and the intruder kicks her.
to rest. He spies a young Black woman carrying a shoebox After a neighbor tells the intruder the police took Tondi, the
approaching the bluegums. As she passes, he pins her against a intruder leaves. David sees the intruder has broken the yellow
tree and shoves a knee between her legs, but a noise from the dog’s back legs. She crawls toward David, gives birth to dead
shoebox shocks him into stepping back. The woman shoves the puppies, and dies.
shoebox at Tsotsi and runs. Inside the shoebox is a baby. David runs away from home. He is wandering the streets when
The next day, Saturday, Tsotsi goes to buy milk for the baby. a gang of orphans finds him and invites him to join them. One
Terrified of Tsotsi, the store owner Cassim tricks him into orphan, Petah, asks David’s name. David tells him but says that
buying condensed milk to get him to go away. Tsotsi goes back David is “dead” now. Later, while scavenging for food with the
to his room and feeds the baby. Worried Butcher or Die Aap orphan gang, David hears a shopkeeper call him a “tsotsi.” He
will catch him taking care of a baby, Tsotsi hides the baby in the chooses Tsotsi as his new name.
ruins near the white neighborhood. There, Tsotsi remembers On Monday, Tsotsi wakes to Die Aap knocking on his door.
that the night before, the baby triggered a memory of a yellow Tsotsi hides the baby and asks Die Aap what he wants. Die Aap
dog. He realizes he’s hoping the baby will trigger more tells Tsotsi that Butcher is angry with Tsotsi and has joined a
memories. different gang. Die Aap suggests he and Tsotsi form a new gang.
When Tsotsi returns to his room, Butcher and Die Aap are Tsotsi refuses and tells Die Aap to leave.

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Tsotsi finds Miriam and brings her back to his room. When beggar, he finds himself overcome with sympathy and spares
Miriam asks the baby’s name, Tsotsi tells her it’s David. When Morris’s life. Later, he coerces a young mother, Miriam Ngidi,
Miriam asks whether Tsotsi is the child’s father, he tells her into breastfeeding the baby, and a chance comment from her
David didn’t know his father. Miriam tells Tsotsi the baby is sick triggers the rest of his memories: when he was 10, he was
and asks to adopt and care for him. Tsotsi refuses, saying the named David and lived with his mother and a yellow dog. One
baby belongs to him. night, the police arrested his mother because she didn’t have a
Tsotsi hides the baby in the ruins and goes looking for Boston. pass that apartheid laws required Black South Africans to carry.
Tsotsi finds Boston unconscious in a shebeen. He carries After her arrest, David became homeless, lost his memories
Boston back to his room and goes to buy food. When Boston due to trauma, and joined a child gang. His experiences in gangs
wakes up in Tsotsi’s bed, Tsotsi explains to Boston about caring led him to swear off sympathy for other human beings. After
for the baby and sparing Morris’s life. He demands that Boston regaining his memories, Tsotsi seeks out Boston and asks what
tell him what is happening to him. Boston tells Tsotsi that he’s is happening to him. When Boston tells Tsotsi he is asking about
changing. When Tsotsi asks what has changed him, Boston tells God, Tsotsi goes to a church, where he discusses religion with
Tsotsi he’s now asking about God. Boston sleeps in Tsotsi’s bed the church gardener, Isaiah. At the same time, Tsotsi continues
that night, and the next morning, even though Tsotsi wants him to seek help from Miriam in caring for the baby. When Miriam
to stay, he leaves. asks to adopt the baby, Tsotsi refuses and hides the baby in the
ruins of a demolished township. The next morning, he wakes up
The next day, Tsotsi is sitting on a sidewalk outside a church
intending to tell Miriam his real name, when he sees bulldozers
when the church gardener, Isaiah, offers him some tea. Tsotsi
approaching the ruins—the white population has complained
asks Isaiah about the church and about God. Isaiah explains as
about Black people resettling in the ruins, and now the ruins
best he can. He then invites Tsotsi to come to church that
are being destroyed. Tsotsi sacrifices his life trying to rescue
evening. Later, Tsotsi carries baby David to Miriam’s and tells
the baby.
her the baby vomited up the milk she left. Miriam gets medicine
for the baby. She restates her desire to care for the baby. Tsotsi The Bab
Babyy – The baby is a Black male infant. His frightened,
begs her not to take the baby from him. He leaves the baby with desperate mother hides the baby in a shoebox, shoves the
her when he hears church bells ringing—presumably to attend shoebox at Tsotsi, and runs away after Tsotsi waylays
the service Isaiah invited him to—but comes back, takes the her—seemingly with the intent of raping her—in a grove of
baby, and hides it again overnight. bluegum trees. The baby triggers a lost memory in Tsotsi of a
yellow dog, so Tsotsi brings the baby back to his room in hopes
The next morning, Tsotsi wakes up thinking he needs to tell
of regaining more memories. Inside the box, Tsotsi discovers
Miriam his real name, David Madondo. He is walking through
the baby is wrapped in “a torn petticoat and an old pair of blue
town when he hears bulldozers. White people have been
bloomers.” This detail—that the baby was wrapped in a woman’s
complaining about Black people moving back into the ruins, so
castoff clothes—suggests that the baby’s mother was very poor
bulldozers have come to raze the ruins again. Tsotsi runs to
and may have abandoned him because she could not support
save the baby, but a bulldozer knocks a wall on top of Tsotsi and
him financially, which further suggests that the baby is, like
kills him. When his body is dragged from the wreckage, there is
Tsotsi, a victim of Black families’ legal and economic oppression
a “beautiful” smile on his face.
and destruction under apartheid. Caring for the baby alienates
Tsotsi from the other members of his gang, Butcher and Die
Aap, and Tsotsi ultimately decides to give up gang life. Tsotsi
CHARA
CHARACTERS
CTERS coerces a young mother, Miriam Ngidi, into breastfeeding and
MAJOR CHARACTERS caring for the baby. Though initially the dirty, sickly baby
repulses Miriam, she begins to care for him and offers to adopt
Tsotsi (Da
(David)
vid) – Tsotsi, Tsotsi’s protagonist, is a young Black
him. Tsotsi, who has given the baby his childhood
man in South Africa under apartheid. He leads a gang, whose
name—David—and come to associate him with his childhood
other members are Boston, Butcher, and Die Aap. At the
self, refuses and hides the baby in the demolished ruins of a
novel’s beginning, Tsotsi has no memories of his past and
Black township. When a nearby white township demands that
identifies with the stereotype tsotsi, meaning gang member or
the ruins be razed again, Tsotsi sacrifices his life trying to save
“thug.” When Boston asks too many questions about Tsotsi’s
the baby, but—although the novel does not say so explicitly—it
past, Tsotsi violently beats him. Afterward, Tsotsi encounters a
seems likely the baby dies, too.
terrified young Black woman, who gives him a baby in a
shoebox and runs away. The baby triggers in Tsotsi the memory Boston – Boston—whose full name is Walter “Boston”
of a yellow dog. Tsotsi decides to care for the baby, hoping to Nguza—is a member of Tsotsi’s gang, which also includes
regain more memories. Caring for the baby changes Tsotsi. Butcher and Die Aap. As a child and young man, Boston was
Though he plans to rob and kill Morris Tshabalala, a crippled small and studious with glasses. While attending a teachers’

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training college on scholarship, he repeatedly came in first in his and sympathy are religiously motivated. After hearing the
class but was expelled before graduation because he tried to voice, Miriam offers to adopt and care for Tsotsi’s baby.
rape a female student. Unwilling to tell his “very proud,” Although Tsotsi may be developing feelings for Miriam—toward
hardworking mother about his expulsion, Boston wrote her the novel’s end, he resolves to tell her his birth name, David
that he had graduated early and was looking for a job in Madondo—he fears she will take the baby and so hides him in
Johannesburg. While seeking work, Boston encountered the ruins, an untrusting decision that ultimately leads to his
Johnboy Lethetwa, in danger of being arrested under apartheid own death and likely the baby’s as well.
law after already having been jailed once for unemployment. Morris T Tshabalala
shabalala – Morris Tshabalala is a beggar who plies his
Boston forged an employer’s signature in Johnboy’s passbook, trade around a street intersection called Terminal Place. He
after which Johnboy convinced Boston to go into business with lost his legs in a gold mining accident, for which he blames
him forging the passes and permits that apartheid demanded white South Africans, who under apartheid reap the economic
Black people carry—a detail illustrating how apartheid’s unjust benefits of Black labor. Now he walks around on his hands,
laws force Tsotsi’s Black characters toward crime. Boston which are hardened and have little sensation left. When Tsotsi
becomes involved in shebeen subculture, develops a drinking comes to Terminal Place looking for a victim to rob and kill, he
problem, and has a brief, failed romance with a shebeen steps on one of Morris’s hands. Morris curses and calls Tsotsi a
proprietress, Marty. After the police arrest Johnboy, Boston’s “whelp of a yellow bitch”—a chance choice of words that
intelligence wins him a place in gang life despite his reputation reminds Tsotsi of the mysterious yellow dog in his memory.
for being a cowardly alcoholic. As the novel opens, he is trying Deciding to kill Morris, Tsotsi stalks and terrifies him over the
and failing to resist Tsotsi’s plan that the gang rob and murder a course of an evening. Although Morris eludes Tsotsi by
man on the train. After the gang murders Gumboot Dhlamini, following two white men pushing a stalled car and later hides in
Boston vomits. Later, he asks Tsotsi whether he knows what a restaurant, he has to emerge when the restaurant closes, at
decency is and poses a series of questions about Tsotsi’s life, which point Tsotsi corners him down a dark street. Yet, having
spurring Tsotsi to beat Boston unconscious. After Tsotsi adopts observed Morris for many hours, Tsotsi has begun to
the baby and spares Morris’s life, however, he finds Boston sympathize with him—the first time Tsotsi can remember
recuperating in Marty’s shebeen, takes Boston back to his own sympathizing with one of the targets of his violence. Instead of
room, and questions him about the experiences he is killing Morris, Tsotsi engages him in a long conversation about
undergoing. Boston tells Tsotsi that Tsotsi is changing and that, Morris’s life, his disability, and his desire to live. When Morris
by asking questions about it, he is asking questions about asks Tsotsi why Tsotsi has to kill him, Tsotsi realizes he doesn’t
God—a conversation that seems to motivate Tsotsi to learn have to—he has a choice whether to commit acts of violence.
more about religion. Though seeming to reconcile with Tsotsi, He decides to spare Morris’s life, a decision that decisively
Boston refuses to stay with him. Instead, he leaves Tsotsi’s alienates him from his old, stereotyped identity of violent gang
room the next morning. Tsotsi never sees him again. member and motivates him to discover more about who he
Miriam Ngidi – Miriam Ngidi is an 18-year-old mother of an truly is.
infant son who gets her water from a public tap down the street Die Aap – Die Aap is a member of Tsotsi’s gang, which also
from Tsotsi’s room. During her pregnancy, her husband Simon, includes Boston and Butcher. “Die Aap” means “monkey” in
who was participating in a bus boycott, vanished while walking Afrikaans (the language of South Africa’s white minority
to work one morning. Because, during apartheid, bus boycotts Afrikaner population), a stereotyped and offensive nickname
were associated with Black South Africans’ protest against for a Black man that supposedly derives from Die Aap’s “long
their political oppression and economic exploitation, the novel arms.” That Die Aap chooses to go by this nickname suggests he
may be implying that white supremacists—perhaps has internalized white South African racism under apartheid.
policemen—killed Simon for participating. In that case, Miriam’s Tsotsi recruited Die Aap for his gang to exploit Die Aap’s
family is another example of apartheid destroying Black physical strength. Die Aap tends to agree with Tsotsi and follow
families and taking Black parents away from their children. him unquestioningly. He participates in Gumboot Dhlamini’s
After her husband’s disappearance, Miriam becomes antisocial murder by pinning Gumboot’s arms while Butcher stabs him.
and stingy, caring only for her own child. Tsotsi coerces Miriam After Tsotsi comes into possession of the baby, Die Aap and
into cleaning and breastfeeding the baby he has adopted by Butcher lobby Tsotsi to do another job with them, which leads
threatening her infant son. At this point, her chance comment to Tsotsi stalking but eventually sparing Morris Tshabalala.
(that a dog would treat its puppies better than this baby’s When Tsotsi begins to drift away from the gang, Die Aap is
mother treated him) triggers Tsotsi to regain his memories. confused and worried. Eventually, Die Aap visits Tsotsi’s room
Though at first Tsotsi’s sickly, dirty adoptive son repulses and tells him Butcher has joined another man’s gang. He
Miriam, she has a change of heart after praying and hearing a suggests that he and Tsotsi recruit a new gang. Tsotsi refuses
voice ask why it should grant her prayer if she won’t feed and tells Die Aap to leave, a decision that marks Tsotsi’s
babies—an episode suggesting that Miriam’s new generosity

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definitive break with gang life. away, eventually becoming Tsotsi.
Butcher – Butcher is a member of Tsotsi’s gang, which also Gumboot Dhlamini – Gumboot Dhlamini works in the mines
includes Boston and Die Aap. Tsotsi recruited Butcher for his near Johannesburg and lives in one of its townships. He came
gang because of Butcher’s skill at violence, for which Butcher is to Johannesburg from far away in South Africa, where he lived
nicknamed. Toward the novel’s beginning, he is the one who with his pregnant wife, to make some money. After a year
actually kills Gumboot Dhlamini, by stabbing him in the heart working in the mines and writing letters to his wife at home, he
with a sharpened bicycle spoke while Die Aap pins Gumboot’s has almost saved enough money that he feels he can return to
arms. Along with Die Aap, he encourages Tsotsi to pick another her. Then Tsotsi, searching for someone his gang can rob and
job for them after Tsotsi finds the baby, which leads to Tsotsi kill on the trains, spots Gumboot because of his bright smile,
stalking but then sparing the life of Morris Tshabalala. Believing colorful tie, and full pay packet. On the train, Die Aap pins
that Tsotsi killed Morris without him and Die Aap, Butcher Gumboot’s arms while Butcher stabs him with a bicycle spoke,
becomes dissatisfied with Tsotsi’s leadership and, after several Boston steals his money, and Tsotsi insults him as he’s dying.
failed attempts to meet up with Tsotsi, eventually joins another The Rev. Henry Ransome, presiding over Gumboot’s funeral at
gang. the township’s dilapidated cemetery, finds himself disturbed
Isaiah – Isaiah, an elderly Black man, takes care of the church that he doesn’t even know the dead man’s name. Gumboot’s
garden and rings the church bells for the Church of Christ the short life, violent death, and anonymous burial point to the
Redeemer in the Black township. His immediate supervisor is cruelty of life for poor non-white workers under apartheid.
the racist, condescending Miss Marriot, while his ultimate Re
Revv. Henry Ransome – Rev. Henry Ransome is a white priest
supervisor is the Rev. Henry Ransome. Tsotsi, after discussing who presides over a church in the Black township, the Church
God with Boston, sits on the sidewalk outside the church, of Christ the Redeemer. Early in the novel, he serves at
where Isaiah sees him and offers him tea. When Tsotsi asks Gumboot Dhlamini’s funeral but is disturbed that he doesn’t
questions about the church, God, and Jesus Christ, Isaiah gives even know the murdered man’s name. The Sunday after the
him a somewhat confused account of Christianity and invites funeral, he finds himself getting angry at parishioners filing into
Tsotsi to come to the evening service when he hears Isaiah the church, thinking that his services are “no good,” and
ringing the bells. Although the novel does not explicitly state recalling once again that he didn’t know Gumboot’s name.
this, it implies that Tsotsi takes Isaiah up on his invitation the Nevertheless, he prays for help and goes to the church to do his
night before Tsotsi’s death. job. Though Rev. Henry Ransome is somewhat condescending
Da
David’s
vid’s Mother (T
(Tondi)
ondi) – Tondi is the mother of David (i.e., toward the Black church gardener Isaiah, Isaiah likes him
Tsotsi when he is 10 years old). She is a comforting presence because he showed Isaiah how to ring the church bell and then
who likes to hum and sing. She takes care of David and shares left him to the task without further interference—unlike the
the family’s food with an elderly woman who is economically other white church employee, Miss Marriot, who constantly
and socially dependent on her. All David’s life, his mother has interferes with Isaiah’s work.
been telling him about his absent father and promising him that Marty – Marty runs the shebeen where Boston drank when he
his father would return. The night before David’s father first began his criminal career with Johnboy Lethetwa. Marty
returns, however, white police raid David’s neighborhood, liked that Boston had manners, and they became romantically
arrest his mother for not having a pass required of her by involved. Their relationship ended, however, after Boston’s first
apartheid law, and take her away in a van. Her arrest gang job where the gang murdered someone. Boston, horrified
precipitates David’s homelessness, memory loss, and eventual at the murder, took out his self-hatred on Marty, and so she
membership in a child gang, which leads to David becoming ended their romance. After Tsotsi beats Boston unconscious
Tsotsi. for asking too many personal questions, Boston finds his way to
Elderly WWoman
oman – The elderly woman lives with David and Marty’s shebeen, where—still badly injured—he drinks and
David’s mother (Tondi), though she does not seem to be related sleeps. Marty is on the verge of kicking Boston out of her
to them. David esteems the elderly woman because he notices establishment when Tsotsi comes looking for him to ask about
that adults esteem her and because she seems to perceive him the personal changes he, Tsotsi, is undergoing. Marty at first
accurately. At the same time, he’s afraid of her because one harshly criticizes Tsotsi for beating Boston but, when Tsotsi
time, she caught him misbehaving and pinched him until he says he just wants to talk to Boston, allows Tsotsi to take
cried. After David’s mother is arrested, the elderly woman finds Boston away.
David and puts him to bed. The next morning, she tells David to Soekie – Soekie is a 50-something woman who runs a shebeen
wait at the house for his father while she goes to look for that Tsotsi and his gang frequent. Though she is
David’s mother and tries to bring her home. While the elderly “coloured”—that is, mixed race, which was its own legal
woman is gone, David’s father arrives at the house without classification under apartheid—she lives in the Black township.
explaining who he is and scares David so badly that David runs Rumor has it that she was born in one of the city’s white

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neighborhoods but her mother, presumably a white woman, then be incarcerated and/or deported back to a “Black/African”
rejected her mixed-race daughter. Soekie has repeatedly tried area. After decades of protest against apartheid by Black-led
to contact her mother but has received no reply, not even political organizations such as the African National Congress
information she has requested about her date of birth. Soekie’s and the Pan Africanist Congress, various South African political
background serves to emphasize how white supremacy and groups negotiated the dismantling of the apartheid system
apartheid tear families apart. between 1990 and 1993. In 1994, South Africa held its first
Petah – Petah is a member of the homeless child gang that election in which people of all races were allowed to vote, and
David joins after his mother’s arrest. Petah invites David to famous anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela became
sleep in the same pipe as him, discourages David from leaving president.
the gang when David remembers his mother told him to stay at Shebeen – A shebeen is a bar where alcohol is sold illegally,
home and wait for her, and encourages David’s plan to pick a without the required license. In South African under apartheid,
new name. Much later, after David has chosen the name Tsotsi shebeens were often located in Black townships and run by
and lost his childhood memories due to trauma, he sees Petah, women, like the Tsotsi characters Soekie and Marty. At various
beaten up, being dragged along by a policeman. Petah calls out points in South Africa under apartheid, shebeens were
to him, but Tsotsi no longer remembers who Petah is and, associated with criminal gang activity but also with political
determined to repress his lost past, refuses to respond. activist meetings and Black/African cultural expression.
Miss Marriot – Miss Marriot is Isaiah the church gardener’s Township – In South Africa under apartheid, the term
racist white supervisor. Her condescension and disrespect “township” usually meant a city neighborhood or suburb where
toward Isaiah—for example, she calls him a “naughty boy” even non-white people—Black/African, Indian, or Coloured—lived
though he is elderly—indicate that while apartheid harms Black close to but segregated from “white” areas of the city.
South Africans’ lives even when they are not experiencing Technically, however, the term “township” could also refer to an
direct interpersonal racism, direct interpersonal racism also all-white area.
characterizes Black-white social relations in the novel.
Cassim – Cassim is an Indian shopkeeper whose shop Tsotsi
enters hoping to buy milk for the baby. Cassim, suspecting
THEMES
Tsotsi is a gang member, is terrified. He tricks Tsotsi into leaving In LitCharts literature guides, each theme gets its own color-
the store by giving him a tin of condensed milk, whose label coded icon. These icons make it easy to track where the themes
Tsotsi can’t read, and telling him it’s milk for babies. occur most prominently throughout the work. If you don't have
a color printer, you can still use the icons to track themes in
MINOR CHARACTERS black and white.
Johnbo
Johnboyy LLethetwa
ethetwa – Johnboy Lethetwa was Boston’s partner
in a pass and permit forgery business until the police arrested APARTHEID AND RACISM
him, at which point Boston joined another gang. The pass and Tsotsi represents South African apartheid (a system
permit forgery business illustrates how unjust, prejudicial of legally enforced segregation and discrimination)
apartheid laws drive Black South Africans to commit crimes. as a racist structure that destroys Black South
Africans’ lives—even when they aren’t experiencing direct,
interpersonal racism. Many of the Black characters’ lives are
TERMS destroyed by racist apartheid laws despite having little direct
Apartheid – In South Africa, apartheid was a white supremacist contact with racist white people. For example, the Black South
social structure, enforced by various laws, which persisted African protagonist, Tsotsi, lost his mother in childhood
from roughly 1948 to 1993. Under apartheid, South Africans because white police rounded up Black people, including her,
were divided into four racial groups: white, Indian, Coloured whom they suspected of living or working in white areas
(meaning people of mixed race), and Black/African. For most of without the required pass. While one of the policemen did
apartheid, it was illegal for a white person to marry or have a display clear racist attitudes—he called Tsotsi’s mother “kaffir,”
sexual relationship with a non-white person. The law also a South African racial slur—it was the law, not his individual
forced people to live in racially segregated areas—relocating beliefs, that empowered him to destroy Tsotsi’s family. Tsotsi’s
large swathes of the population to areas that had been legally mother’s abduction propelled Tsotsi into homelessness and
designated for their race. Additionally, it was only legal for gang membership. In this sense, though Tsotsi rarely interacts
Black people to work in “white” parts of South Africa if they had with white people, the racist and white supremacist structure
a special pass. If the police found a Black person in a “white” of apartheid changed the direction of his whole life.
area without a pass, they would arrest that person, who could Other Black characters similarly suffer from the racist

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economic and legal structures of apartheid, whether or not IDENTITY AND MEMORY
they come into regular contact with racist white people: the
In Tsotsi, characters have three kinds of identity,
beggar Morris Tshabalala is crippled in a mining accident as a
one false and two true: the false identity of
Black worker in an industry where the profits and gold go to
stereotype, and the true identities of individual
white people. The young mother Miriam Ngidi experiences the
history and of universal human belonging. Memory is necessary
disappearance of her husband during his participation in a bus
to reject a false, stereotyped identity in favor of true individual
boycott—and although the novel does not explicitly state this
and group identities. In the novel, these different identities,
fact, major bus boycotts in apartheid South Africa were often
false and true, play out in the protagonist’s, Tsotsi’s, life. Tsotsi’s
protests by the Black population against segregation and
real name is David, but after a traumatic experience in his
economic exploitation of Black workers, which exposed
childhood, in which policemen abducted his mother and he
protesters like Miriam’s husband to retaliatory racial violence.
ended up homeless, he lost most of his memories and rejected
And Tsotsi’s fellow gang member Boston becomes a criminal
his true identity. When he joined a group of homeless children
after he forges an employment history for an acquaintance who
who scavenged and stole their food, a shopkeeper called him a
will go to jail due to racist apartheid laws unless he can prove he
tsotsi—a word meaning “gangster” or “thug”—and he took this
has a previous employer. Thus, Tsotsi represents how a racist
stereotyped identity as his name. When he is Tsotsi, a
legal and economic structure like apartheid can harm
stereotype without a memory or history, people do not
oppressed people independent of and in addition to the
recognize him as a human individual. As a gang leader, his
interpersonal prejudice they experience.
potential victims—for example, the shopkeeper Cassim and the
beggar Morris Tshabalala—find him so frightening that they
PARENTS AND CHILDREN literally cannot see or remember his face. Their inability to see
Tsotsi suggests that the inhumanity of South Tsotsi’s face represents how his stereotyped identity strips him
African apartheid (a period of enforced racial of his true identity.
segregation) is clearest in how it separates parents Once Tsotsi begins to remember his past and sympathize with
from children. The novel represents family as fundamental to other people, however, he gradually recognizes himself as a
human fellow feeling and moral development. At the novel’s member of humanity: he sees himself dimly reflected in a shop
beginning, the gang-leader protagonist, Tsotsi, cannot window and realizes his reflection could represent not only
remember his childhood or anything about his family. He begins himself but his fellow gang members Boston and Butcher, or
to remember his past and thus his own humanity when he even his potential victim Morris Tshabalala. By connecting his
starts taking care of—acting as a father toward—an abandoned own image with those of other human beings, Tsotsi is coming
baby. As Tsotsi remembers more of his childhood, especially his to realize one of his true identities—as a human being like other
mother, he develops newfound sympathy toward other people, human beings. Finally, when Tsotsi fully regains his memories
realizing, “Every single person in the world had a mother.” Thus, and decides, counter to the tsotsi stereotype, to become an
throughout the story, the novel portrays an awareness of family adoptive father to a baby, he reclaims his full name and
ties—biological or adopted—as essential to fellow feeling. individual identity: David Madondo. Thus, Tsotsi suggests that
Throughout the story, South African apartheid destroys Black to reject the false identities that stereotypes impose on us, we
families. As a child, Tsotsi loses his mother to a police raid need to remember our individual histories and embrace our
whose purpose is to prevent Black people without special group identity as human beings.
passes from living or working in white areas. Miriam Ngidi loses
her husband, and her young baby loses his father, when her HATRED, SYMPATHY, AND GOD
husband disappears while participating in a bus boycott—and
Tsotsi suggests that hatred and sympathy are two
bus boycotts in apartheid South Africa were usually protests by
essential ways that people can relate to one
Black workers against apartheid and its economic exploitation
another: hatred rejects human connection, while
of Black people, which exposed the protesting workers to
sympathy embraces human connection. At first, the gang-
violence by the white supremacist state. Finally, the demolition
leader protagonist, Tsotsi, hates people who try to connect with
of Black homes at the urging of the white township leads to
him or otherwise remind him of his own humanity. For example,
Tsotsi’s death and—it is implied—the death of his adopted baby,
Tsotsi feels “cold hate, utterly merciless” for fellow gang
as Tsotsi has hidden the baby in an abandoned home and, when
member Boston when Boston asks him about his feelings and
the bulldozers come, he is killed trying to save the baby. This
his past trauma. Tsotsi senses that Boston is trying to bring
pattern throughout the story—in which family is fundamental
“light” to the darkness of his interior life, and he rejects this
to humanity, and apartheid destroys families—implies that one
attempt by physically attacking Boston. By contrast, when
of the greatest evils of apartheid lies in its depriving Black
Tsotsi begins to feel sympathy for the crippled beggar Morris
children of their parents.
Tshabalala, he images his sympathy as a lighted candle that

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allows him to really see Morris—and also to really see Boston,
the gang’s former victim Gumboot Dhlamini, and the baby SYMBOLS
Tsotsi has adopted. In this way, the novel suggests that hatred
Symbols appear in teal text throughout the Summary and
and sympathy are equal and opposite tendencies in human
Analysis sections of this LitChart.
relationships: hatred is the dark rejection of connection,
whereas sympathy is the bright embrace of connection.
Throughout, the novel subtly connects sympathy to the idea of TSOTSI’S KNIFE
God, and toward the novel’s end the connection becomes In Tsotsi, the protagonist Tsotsi’s knife symbolizes
explicit. Tsotsi attacks Boston after Boston insists Tsotsi has a his false, stereotyped identity as a tsotsi—that is, a
soul—suggesting that Tsotsi’s hatred leads him to reject both “thug” or gang member. Near the novel’s beginning, the reader
sympathy and religious ideas like “soul” as a package deal. After learns that Tsotsi carries the knife everywhere and sleeps with
Tsotsi beats Boston, Boston tells him that one day, he’ll have it under his pillow. To remind himself of his unswerving
feelings, and “God help you that day.” These words about God commitment to violence and gang membership, Tsotsi takes out
resonate with Tsotsi: after leaving the bar where he beat the knife every morning as soon as he wakes up, tests its
Boston, he passes a church, which leads him to panic and sprint sharpness, and either sharpens it or plays with it. At this point,
away. Later, when Tsotsi has begun to remember his past and the knife reinforces Tsotsi’s false, stereotyped identity as a
feel sympathy for others, he finds Boston and demands Boston mindlessly violent young man. Once Tsotsi adopts an
explain why this change is occurring in him. Boston tells Tsotsi abandoned baby boy and cares for him, however, Tsotsi’s
that Tsotsi is asking about God. Tsotsi then questions a church relationship to the knife changes. Feeding the baby for the first
gardener named Isaiah about God and (the novel implies) time, Tsotsi buys a tin of condensed milk and uses his knife to
accepts his invitation to attend church. Finally, Tsotsi dies poke holes in the tin. The inappropriateness of using a knife to
sacrificing his life attempting to save the baby he has open a milk tin for a baby symbolizes the clash between Tsotsi’s
adopted—reminiscent of Jesus Christ’s sacrificing his life on the old, stereotyped gang identity and the true identity he is trying
cross. Thus, Tsotsi not only suggests hatred and sympathy are to reclaim—that of caring human being and family member.
essential human behaviors but also suggests human sympathy Finally, toward the novel’s end, Tsotsi wakes up to knocking on
is mysteriously connected to God. his door, reaches for his knife—and then, instead of going
through with his usual knife-sharpening ritual, checks on the
HABIT VS. CHOICE baby instead. When the knocking resumes, Tsotsi grabs the
In Tsotsi, characters become stuck in habits, or knife, but it no longer has the mind-blanking effect it used to
have on him. Instead, it triggers memories of his life before
patterns of behavior, because they do not
gang membership and makes him think about how he arrived at
recognize they have choices. Only once characters
his present reality. Tsotsi’s preference for the baby over the
recognize their power to change are they able to take some
knife and the knife’s failure to erase his memories of his true
control over their lives. At the novel’s beginning, the gang-
history and identity, at this late point in the novel, show how
leader protagonist, Tsotsi, accepts his own criminal behavior
Tsotsi has outgrown his false, stereotyped identity as merely a
and other people’s fear of him as an immutable, natural fact,
violent gang member.
“feeling in this the way other men feel when they see the sun in
the morning.” It is only when he begins to care for an
abandoned baby, an action that doesn’t “fit into the pattern of YELLOW DOG
his life,” that he begins to realize he has agency over his
In Tsotsi, the yellow dog represents Black families’
behavior. Caring for the baby leads him to realize, in turn, that
destruction by South African apartheid. The novel’s
even though killing people is “as natural in the pattern of his life
protagonist Tsotsi, a gang member who remembers nothing
as waking and sleeping,” he doesn’t actually have to commit acts
about his past, has his first flashback to the yellow dog after a
of violence. This realization allows Tsotsi to spare the life of the
desperate young Black woman gives him a baby in a shoebox
beggar Morris Tshabalala, whom he thought he had to kill. By
and runs away. That an abandoned baby triggers the flashback
contrast, other members of Tsotsi’s gang, Butcher and Die Aap,
clearly associates the dog with family separation. Later, when
never realize their own power to choose. When Tsotsi, their
Tsotsi steps on the hand of Morris Tshabalala, a former mine
leader, abandons them, they try to maintain their gang-life
worker who lost his legs in a tunnel collapse, Morris calls him
habits as best they can: Butcher joins another gang, while Die
“whelp of a yellow bitch.” Immediately, Tsotsi has another
Aap tries to convince Tsotsi to form a new gang with him. Thus,
flashback to the yellow dog, who is female (literally a “bitch”). By
Tsotsi suggests that people do have the power to choose and
having Morris call Tsotsi a yellow dog’s “whelp,” the novel
change—but only if, like the character Tsotsi, they consciously
mysteriously connects the yellow dog to Tsotsi’s own mother,
recognize that they have such power.
whom Tsotsi cannot remember. When Miriam Ngidi, a young

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mother whom Tsotsi coerces into breastfeeding his adopted
baby, criticizes the woman who abandoned the baby, saying, “a morning.” Sunrise is a natural process that human beings
bitch in a backyard would look after its puppies better,” Tsotsi cannot control. The comparison between sunrise and the
finally remembers his childhood. When he was 10 years old, his township’s fearful hatred of Tsotsi, then, implies that Tsotsi
father was scheduled to return to him and his mother the next has no choice in his actions, and so the township has no
day after a long absence. The yellow dog was Tsotsi’s family pet, choice in its reactions. Both parties are stuck in their
pregnant with puppies. The night before his father’s return, patterns or habits.
white police raided his neighborhood and arrested his mother Although Tsotsi seems to believe he cannot influence the
for not having the pass required of Black people under township’s reaction to him any more than he can change the
apartheid law. The next day, his father knocked on the door, but sunrise, he nevertheless derives a sense of identity from it:
Tsotsi, terrified, hid in the backyard. When his father came into because of the township’s fear and hate, “he knew he
the backyard, the yellow dog snarled at him, so the father was”—in other words, he gains a sense of his own existence.
kicked her, breaking her back legs. After his father left, Tsotsi This quotation implies that, despite not enjoying the
saw the dog give birth to dead puppies and then die from her township’s fear and hatred, Tsotsi is motivated to provoke
injuries. Thus, late in the novel, it is revealed that the yellow dog their hatred because it gives him a solid sense of identity
haunting Tsotsi’s memories symbolizes how apartheid which he’d otherwise lack.
destroyed Tsotsi’s family—stealing his mother and alienating
him from his father.
Chapter 2 Quotes
QUO
QUOTES
TES [Tsotsi’s] own eyes in front of a mirror had not been able to
put together the eyes, and the nose, and the mouth and the
Note: all page numbers for the quotes below refer to the Grove chin, and make a man with meaning. His own features in his
Press edition of Tsotsi published in 2006. own eyes had been as meaningless as a handful of stones
picked up at random in the street outside his room. He allowed
Chapter 1 Quotes himself no thought of himself, he remembered no yesterdays,
and tomorrow existed only when it was the present, living
[Tsotsi’s] knowledge was without any edge of enjoyment. It moment. He was as old as that moment, and his name was the
was simply the way it should be, feeling in this the way other name, in a way, of all men.
men feel when they see the sun in the morning. The big men,
the brave ones, stood down because of him, the fear was of him,
the hate was for him. It was all there because of him. He knew Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), Boston, Die Aap,
he was. He knew he was there, at that moment, leading the Butcher, Soekie, Gumboot Dhlamini
others to take one on the trains.
Related Themes:

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), Boston, Die Aap, Page Number: 20-21
Butcher
Explanation and Analysis
Related Themes: After murdering Gumboot Dhlamini on the train, Tsotsi,
Boston, Die Aap, and Butcher have gone to Soekie’s
Page Number: 7 shebeen (illegal drinking establishment). Boston, humiliated
because the murder made him vomit, is drinking heavily and
Explanation and Analysis
begins to ask Tsotsi about himself, despite knowing that
Tsotsi is leading the other members of his gang—Boston, Tsotsi hates being asked about himself. Immediately before
Die Aap, and Butcher—through the township (a segregated this quotation occurs, the novel reveals that Tsotsi hates
non-white neighborhood or suburb) at nightfall. They are these questions because he doesn’t know the answers: he
going to the train station to “take one on the trains,” that is, has no memories of his early life.
to rob and kill a commuter going home.
Without memories, Tsotsi cannot “make a man with
Tsotsi knows that people in the township “fear” and “hate” meaning” out of his own face in the mirror. In other words,
him because they see him as a tsotsi, a South African term he doesn’t see himself as an individual with a coherent
meaning a gang member or “thug.” Interestingly, he neither identity. In fact, he barely sees himself as human: the parts
dislikes nor feels “enjoyment” at their reaction. Instead, he
feels “the way other men feel when they see the sun in the

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of his face might as well be inanimate objects, “a handful of Tsotsi belongs. Yet Tsotsi has constructed his identity
stones picked up at random.” Tsotsi’s nonexistent sense of around a stereotype, “tsotsi” (gang member or “thug”),
self implies that a working memory is essential to individual which he and the people around him view as inhuman or
identity. It also helps explain why he clings to the subhuman. By insisting that Tsotsi is a human being, Boston
stereotyped identity “tsotsi” (i.e. gang member)—the is threatening Tsotsi’s stereotyped sense of himself—which
stereotype, at least, provides an identity for him. helps explain why Tsotsi finally attacks Boston at this
Yet the claim that Tsotsi’s name is “the name, in a way, of all moment.
men” hints that even while lacking a memory, Tsotsi does Second, Boston’s claim implies a religious worldview—likely
have another identity he could assume: the identity of a Christian worldview, since South Africa is a predominantly
human being. In acting out the “tsotsi” stereotype and being Christian country. In Christianity, people have immortal
violent toward others, then, Tsotsi is not taking the only souls created and judged by God. Since the Christian God
path available but actively choosing one path over disapproves of robbery and murder—the activities in which
another—he could, instead, embrace the identity of “all Boston and Tsotsi have just been engaged—Boston’s
men,” of humankind, and act in solidarity with others. At this affirmation of the existence of souls (and, by implication,
point in the novel, he is choosing violence over solidarity God) suggests that he is passing judgment on his own and
and hatred over sympathy, even if he is not aware of making Tsotsi’s way of life. Tsotsi may also feel threatened by
a choice. Boston’s religious judgment, another reason Tsotsi finally
attacks Boston here.

They stayed that way until the street cried, then laughter,
and Soekie started her song again at the beginning, staying Chapter 3 Quotes
like that, Boston still, Tsotsi seemingly the same as always, the The knife was not only his weapon, but also a fetish, a
one in disbelief, the other at the explosive moment of action, talisman that conjured away bad spirits and established him
and this moment precipitated when Boston whispered: ‘You securely in his life.
must have a soul Tsotsi. Everybody’s got a soul. Every living
human being has got a soul!’
Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), Boston

Related Characters: Boston (speaker), Tsotsi (David), Related Themes:

Soekie, Butcher, Die Aap
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number: 36
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis
Explanation and Analysis
After Tsotsi finishes beating Boston and leaves the shebeen,
Butcher and Die Aap have taken the one other patron at Boston’s words haunt him. He runs until his mind is empty
Soekie’s shebeen, a drunk woman, outside to rape and stops under bluegum trees to rest. There he begins
her—leaving Tsotsi and Boston alone. Boston has been thinking again, and the novel informs readers of the life
pestering Tsotsi about his feelings and family history, rules Tsotsi usually follows to avoid disturbing thoughts. His
questions that fill Tsotsi with hatred. This quotation occurs first rule is, as soon as he wakes up, to reach for the knife
after Boston has lapsed into silence for a time, shocked by under his pillow and sharpen or play with it. Thus, Tsotsi
Tsotsi’s lack of visible reactions. Although Tsotsi has been uses the knife—a “weapon,” a tool for violence—to reinforce
poised “at the explosive moment of action” for a while, what his stereotyped identity as a violent gang member and to
finally “precipitate[s]” Tsotsi to act is Boston’s claim that repress or ignore memories and emotions that evoke his
Tsotsi has a soul. Immediately afterward, Tsotsi violently forgotten self, the person he was before he joined the gang.
beats Boston.
This quotation uses language to describe Tsotsi’s knife that
Boston’s claim that everyone has a soul has two major European colonizers might use to describe traditional
implications. First, it implies that every human being has African religions. For example, European colonizers coined
something in common—or, in other words, that there is a the term “fetish” to describe objects used in African
real group identity, humankind, to which everyone including religious practices. Like a fetish, a “talisman” is an object

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believed to possess religious or magical properties. The sympathy for him, isn’t something he can completely
quotation says that the knife, a fetish/talisman, “conjure[s] control.
away bad spirits”: the term conjuration can describe the
summoning or dismissal of spirits in a variety of religious
practices globally, including some traditional African
This was man. This small, almost ancient, very useless and
religions. abandoned thing was the beginning of a man.
That the knife is clearly a negative symbol, associated with
violence, has disturbing implications. Whereas the novel
Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Cassim,
associates Christianity (brought to South Africa by white
Boston
colonizers) with sympathy and universal human solidarity, it
is associating traditional African religions here with
Related Themes:
weapons, violence, and gang membership. Thus, although
the novel critiques apartheid’s white supremacy and has Page Number: 49
anti-racist intentions, at least in this instance, it reinforces a
negative stereotype about African culture. Explanation and Analysis
Tsotsi has returned to his room, where he has hidden the
baby, after buying some condensed milk for the baby to
Chapter 4 Quotes drink at Cassim’s store. Although the baby smells, Tsotsi is
He didn’t see the man, he saw the type. too shocked to notice: he looks at the baby and sees “man.”
The quotation doesn’t mean that Tsotsi recognizes the baby
is male—he won’t realize that until he unwraps and cleans
Related Characters: Cassim, Tsotsi (David), The Baby the baby later in the chapter. Rather, it means that Tsotsi
recognizes the baby as the “type” of man—an example of a
Related Themes:
group identity, humankind. This may explain why Tsotsi
Page Number: 43 describes the baby as “ancient,” although by definition a
baby has to be young: the baby represents an “ancient”
Explanation and Analysis species.
The morning after a terrified woman gives Tsotsi a shoebox Up to this point in the novel, Tsotsi has reacted to others
with a baby in it, Tsotsi enters the store of a shopkeeper with hatred and violence. Now he is breaking that pattern
named Cassim to buy milk for the baby. When Cassim looks by experiencing nebulous positive feelings toward the baby.
at Tsotsi, he sees not a “man,” an individual worthy of That Tsotsi’s care for the baby coincides with his
respect, but a “type”—that is, a tsotsi (“gangster” or “thug”) recognition of the baby’s humanity suggests two things.
stereotype. First—contrary to his violent reaction to Boston’s
Cassim is Indian. Like other non-white racial groups under invocation of common humanity—Tsotsi may, deep down,
apartheid, Indians had fewer rights than white people. This believe that merely being human entitles someone to
quotation shows how apartheid’s culture not only put white sympathy and care. Second, Tsotsi cannot remember his
people at the top of a racial hierarchy but also sowed anti- family—but now, caring for a baby and thus confronted with
Black prejudice among non-white people. Although Cassim a parental role, he begins to act more ethically, which
and Tsotsi are both members of discriminated classes, suggests that family relationships (biological or otherwise)
Cassim does not feel solidarity with Tsotsi and recognize may be particularly important to maintaining solidarity with
their common humanity. Instead, he looks at Tsotsi, a young humanity at large.
Black man, and sees the violent, no-good “type.” It is
especially ironic that he has that reaction to Tsotsi now,
when Tsotsi is not trying to do anything criminal but trying
to care for an abandoned baby.
With Cassim’s reaction to Tsotsi, this quotation suggests
that while Tsotsi embraces the tsotsi stereotype to gain a
sense of self, other people also impose this stereotype on
him—other people’s fear and hatred of him, their lack of

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Tsotsi knew one thing very definitely now. Starting last Chapter 5 Quotes
night, and maybe even before that, because sitting there
Gumboot had been allocated a plot near the centre. He
with a quiet mind to the events of the past hours it seemed
was buried by the Reverend Henry Ransome of the Church of
almost as if there might have been a beginning before the
Christ the Redeemer in the township. The minister went
bluegum trees, but regardless of where or when, he had started
through the ritual with uncertainty. He was disturbed, and he
doing things that did not fit into the pattern of his life. There
knew it and that made it worse. If only he had known the name
was no doubt about this. The pattern was too simple, too clear,
of the man he was burying. This man, O Lord! What man? This
woven as it had been by his own hands, using his knife like a
one, fashioned in your likeness.
shuttle to carry the red thread of death and interlace it with
others stained in equally sombre hues. The baby did not belong
and certainly none of the actions that had been forced on him Related Characters: Gumboot Dhlamini, Rev. Henry
as a result of its presence, like buying baby milk, or feeding it or Ransome, Boston
cleaning it or hiding it with more cunning and secrecy than
other people hid what they had from him. Related Themes:

Page Number: 60-61

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Butcher, Die
Aap Explanation and Analysis
Rev. Henry Ransome, the white reverend who presides over
Related Themes: a Christian church in the Black township, is performing
Gumboot Dhlamini’s funeral at the township’s dilapidated
Related Symbols: cemetery. Earlier in the novel, Boston made an implicit
religious argument for all human beings having a common
Page Number: 55-56 group identity by claiming that all human beings have at
Explanation and Analysis least one thing in common—everyone has a soul. Here, Rev.
Henry Ransome makes another implicit religious argument
Tsotsi doesn’t want his fellow gang members Butcher and
for all human beings having a common group identity:
Die Aap to find a baby in his room, so he decides to hide the
according to Christian theology, all human beings,
baby in the ruins of a Black township demolished by the
regardless of their race, are “fashioned in [God’s] likeness.”
apartheid government (presumably to more strictly enforce
residential segregation). Having hidden the baby in a shady Yet while Rev. Henry Ransome may believe in theory that
place in the ruins, Tsotsi sits down and thinks about his human beings of every race are “fashioned in [God’s]
actions. likeness,” in practice he lives in a white supremacist society,
apartheid South Africa, which divides humankind into
Tsotsi, engaging in self-reflection, is coming to realize that
stereotyped groups by race. Rev. Henry Ransome laments
he is changing “the pattern of his life.” In an extended
that he doesn’t know Gumboot Dhlamini’s name—which
metaphor, he imagines the pattern of his life as a piece of
suggests that, as a reverend in the township where
cloth, “woven” by him. His knife—which represents his
Gumboot lived, he should have known Gumboot’s name but
stereotyped identity as a violent tsotsi—is a “shuttle,” a
didn’t. This failure on Rev. Henry Ransome’s part, which
traditional tool used in weaving, while death itself is the “red
makes him “disturbed,” suggests that he may not be as
thread” that provides the basic material. Translated into
familiar with the Black community in which he works as he
simpler language, Tsotsi’s metaphor suggests that before
should be.
the baby, his life was all about violence, crime, and death.
In other words, Rev. Henry Ransome’s individual religious
The quotation is of interest not only because it reveals that
ideals have failed to overpower the social forces of
Tsotsi’s identity is changing—instead of acting as a gang
segregation and racial division that keep him from knowing
member, he is acting as a parental figure to an abandoned
a poor Black worker like Gumboot. Thus, this quotation
baby—but also because it shows Tsotsi thinking about
suggests that while religion may inspire individuals to hold
himself. In the past, Tsotsi has tried to avoid thinking about
good beliefs or have good intentions, it cannot solve a social
himself, using his knife and other forms of violence as a
evil like apartheid.
distraction. The quotation thus illustrates that the changes
taking place in Tsotsi’s identity are causing him to become
more self-aware.

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It was the awareness of alternatives that disturbed Tsotsi Chapter 6 Quotes
and seemed to paralyse his will. Up to that moment he had
[Morris] looked at the street and the big cars with their
lived his life as the victim of dark impulses. They had been
white passengers warm inside like wonderful presents in bright
ready, rising to his moments of need all through his life. Where
boxes, and the carefree, ugly crowds of the pavement, seeing
they came from he never knew, and their reasons for coming he
them all with baleful feelings.
had never questioned. What he realized now was that
something had tampered with the mechanism that had It is for your gold that I had to dig. That is what destroyed me.
governed his life, inhibiting its function. You are walking on stolen legs. All of you.
Even in this there was no satisfaction. As if knowing his
Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), Die Aap, Butcher thoughts, they stretched their thin, unsightly lips into bigger
smiles while the crude sounds of their language and laughter
Related Themes: seemed even louder. A few of them, after buying a newspaper,
dropped pennies in front of him. He looked the other way when
Page Number: 70 he pocketed them.

Explanation and Analysis

Related Characters: Morris Tshabalala
Butcher and Die Aap have come to Tsotsi’s room, as they
usually do, expecting him to tell them what acts of violence Related Themes:
the gang will perform that night. Unexpectedly, Tsotsi finds
it difficult to decide what to tell them. This difficulty reveals Page Number: 87
two things about Tsotsi.
Explanation and Analysis
First, although Tsotsi often inflicts violence on others, he
sees himself as a “victim” because, before he became aware Morris Tshabalala, a disabled Black beggar, is resting by a
that he had choices, “dark impulses” that he did not newspaper stand and watching white crowds go by. Morris
understand controlled his behavior. He uses figurative used to work as a gold miner. In apartheid South Africa,
language to describe this control: a mysterious machine Black men did the dangerous physical labor of gold mining
“governed” his life, but then the machine’s “mechanism”—the while white people reaped almost all the profits. Morris lost
part of a machine that turns inputs into outputs—broke his legs in a mining accident and was not able to find work
down. This figurative language suggests that so long as afterwards, which is why he now begs.
Tsotsi had no self-awareness about his own free will, so long This quotation illustrates how, in the novel, racist structures
as he did not believe he had choices, he passively accepted harm Black characters and privilege white characters,
and acted according to the tsotsi (“gang member” or “thug”) whether or not the Black characters experience
stereotype imposed on him by others. In that sense, he was interpersonal racism from white people. When Morris
a “victim” of stereotype. thinks that the white people he sees are “walking on stolen
Second, Tsotsi is gaining the freedom to choose merely by legs,” his thought is pointing out how economic systems in
realizing that he has choices. Since adopting a baby, Tsotsi apartheid South Africa enrich white people while keeping
has developed an “awareness of alternatives”: he realizes Black people poor and putting them in physical danger—the
that he can act out other roles than the stereotyped tsotsi white people who controlled the gold mines got rich off
identity. For instance, he can take on the role of parent to an Morris’s labor, while he suffered catastrophic injuries and
abandoned baby. At this point in the novel, Tsotsi still finds became unemployed.
his newfound freedom disturbing—but his realization of This social dynamic exists regardless of whether the white
freedom is essential to his character development. people Morris is viewing are individually racist. Although
other white characters in the book do engage in
interpersonal racism, this particular crowd does not—all
they are doing is driving cars or walking, smiling, laughing,
and occasionally giving Morris money. Nevertheless, the
racist structures of apartheid South Africa make them the
indirect beneficiaries of Morris’s suffering.

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Are his hands soft? he would ask himself, and then shake Chapter 7 Quotes
his head in anger and desperation at the futility of the
What is sympathy? If you had asked Tsotsi this, telling him
question. But no sooner did he stop asking it than another
that it was his new experience, he would have answered: like
would occur. Has he got a mother? This question was
light, meaning that it revealed. Pressed further, he might have
persistent. Hasn’t he got a mother? Didn’t she love him? Didn’t
thought of darkness and lighting a candle, and holding it up to
she sing him songs? He was really asking how do men come to
find Morris Tshabalala within the halo of its radiance. He was
be what they become. For all he knew others might have asked
seeing him for the first time, in a way that he hadn’t seen him
the same question about himself. There were times when he
didn’t feel human. He knew he didn’t look it. before, or with a second sort of sight, or maybe just more
clearly. […]
But that wasn’t all. The same light fell on the baby, and
Related Characters: Morris Tshabalala , Tsotsi (David),
somehow on Boston too, and wasn’t that the last face of
David’s Mother (Tondi)
Gumboot Dhlamini there, almost where the light ended and
things weren’t so clear anymore. And beyond that still, what? A
Related Themes:
sense of space, of an infinity stretching away so vast that the
Page Number: 88 whole world, the crooked trees, the township streets, the
crowded, wheezing rooms, might have been waiting there for a
Explanation and Analysis brighter, intense revelation.
Morris Tshabalala has realized that a dangerous-looking
young man (Tsotsi) is stalking him and may intend to kill him. Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), Morris Tshabalala , The
Morris, terrified, is wondering who Tsotsi is and what Baby, Boston, Gumboot Dhlamini
motivates him.
This quotation is important for two reasons. First, it Related Themes:
demonstrates how some people are capable of
sympathizing with others, even when those others threaten Page Number: 106-107
them. Morris himself has calloused hands because, lacking Explanation and Analysis
legs, he uses his hands to get around. By asking whether
Tsotsi’s hands are “soft,” then, Morris is wondering whether Tsotsi has been stalking Morris Tshabalala with the intent of
Tsotsi is dissimilar or similar to him. By noticing that “other killing him. Yet as he stalks Morris, he begins to have an
people might have asked” about Morris what Morris is unusual experience, an emotion toward a potential victim he
asking about Tsotsi, meanwhile, Morris is noticing possible does not remember ever feeling before. Although Tsotsi has
similarities between Tsotsi and himself. Morris’s not realized it, the emotion he is feeling is “sympathy.”
sympathetic thoughts about Tsotsi—even though he fears Although the novel has previously suggested that sympathy
Tsotsi may kill him—suggests that sympathy is a common, is important, this passage reveals what sympathy is,
essential way that people relate to and understand each according to the novel. Sympathy is not just a subjective
other. emotion; instead, it is “like light” in that “it reveal[s].” In other
Second, Morris’s thoughts foreshadow an important words, sympathy is a means of understanding a truth. When
revelation later in the novel. Morris repeatedly wonders the passage says that sympathy allows Tsotsi to see Morris
about Tsotsi’s mother. Although neither the reader nor “for the first time” or “maybe just more clearly,” it is implying
Tsotsi yet knows this, Tsotsi’s separation from his mother that sympathy helps Tsotsi understand the truth that
started the chain of events that led to Tsotsi losing his Morris is a fellow human being. Tsotsi’s new understanding
childhood memories and becoming a gang member. Morris of Morris’s humanity then extends outward to his other
wonders “how do men come to be what they become”—and victims (Boston, Gumboot Dhlamini) as well as to the baby
his thoughts in this quotation are subtly laying the for whom he’s been caring.
groundwork for the revelation that Tsotsi became what he This passage also mysteriously suggests that Tsotsi’s
became because white policemen enforcing unjust sympathy for Morris may have a divine source. In religion,
apartheid laws took his mother away. the word “revelation” refers to knowledge that God, gods,
or supernatural spirits give to human beings. The passage’s
suggestion that sympathy could extend to “infinity” and that
a “brighter, intense” revelation is awaiting the world, then,
implies that humans’ sympathy for one another has its

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source in an infinite God’s sympathy for all of humankind. hints at the pain and bitterness he may feel at not having
The passage’s coded religious imagery also foreshadows memories of his mother—pain and bitterness of which he
Tsotsi’s religious experiences later in the novel. does not seem consciously aware.

I must give him something, he thought. I must give this Chapter 8 Quotes
strange and terrible night something back for all it has So she carried on, outwardly adjusting the pattern of her
given me. With the instinct of his kind, he turned to beauty and life as best she could, like taking in washing, doing odd cleaning
gave back the most beautiful thing he knew. jobs in the nearby white suburb. Inwardly she had fallen into
‘Mothers love their children. I know. I remember. They sing us something like a possessive sleep where the same dream is
songs when we are small. I’m telling you, tsotsi. Mothers love dreamt over and over again. She seldom smiled now, kept to
their children.’ herself and her baby, asked no favours and gave none, hoarding
as it were the moments and things in her life.
After this there was silence for the words to register and make
their meaning, for Tsotsi to stand up and say in reply: ‘They
don’t. I’m telling you, I know they don’t,’ and then he walked Related Characters: Miriam Ngidi, Tsotsi (David), David’s
away. Mother (Tondi), The Baby

Related Themes:
Related Characters: Morris Tshabalala , Tsotsi (David),
David’s Mother (Tondi) Page Number: 135

Related Themes: Explanation and Analysis

Miriam Ngidi lost her husband while she was eight months
Page Number: 115 pregnant; he vanished while walking to work during a bus
Explanation and Analysis boycott. Although the novel never reveals what happened
to him, bus boycotts in apartheid South Africa were a major
Tsotsi has finished stalking Morris Tshabalala and closed in
way that Black workers expressed political opposition to
on him. Due to his newfound sympathy for Morris, however,
apartheid and its economic oppression of Black people—and
Tsotsi does not kill him immediately—instead, they begin
Black boycotters sometimes suffered racist violence as a
talking. When Morris demands to know why Tsotsi must kill
result. Thus, the novel hints that Miriam lost her husband
him, Tsotsi realizes he has the choice to spare Morris’s
due to the racist social context of apartheid. In this passage,
life—and takes it. Morris, in gratitude, decides to tell Tsotsi
the novel is describing how Miriam “adjust[ed]” after losing
“the most beautiful thing” he knows: mothers love their
her husband.
children and sing to them. This claim of Morris’s
foreshadows a later event in the novel—Tsotsi regaining his This passage suggests subtle parallels between Miriam and
memories and realizing that his mother did indeed love him Tsotsi. As Tsotsi later remembers, he lost a beloved family
and sing to him. member, his mother, due to apartheid—just as Miriam lost
her husband. Tsotsi reacted to this trauma by falling into
That the most beautiful thing Morris knows is mothers’ love
gang life and violent habits. The novel uses almost the same
for their children emphasizes family’s importance—and
phrase (“the pattern of her life”) to describe Miriam’s
mothers’ importance in particular—to the novel. Yet Morris
routine as it previously used to describe Tsotsi’s (“the
only knows a mother’s love because he “remember[s].” At
pattern of his life”). The repetition hints that Miriam, too,
this point, Tsotsi cannot remember his childhood and so
has reacted to her trauma by falling into negative, antisocial
cannot remember his mother’s love. Given how sympathetic
(though not violent) habits: “hoarding” her life and avoiding
Morris is to Tsotsi—a man who nearly killed him—the novel
other people. The parallels between Miriam and Tsotsi
may be implying that a mother’s love supports children’s
foreshadow the unlikely alliance they will form to take care
capacity for sympathy: Morris, who remembers his mother,
of Tsotsi’s adopted baby.
easily sympathizes with other people, whereas Tsotsi, who
does not, is only just regaining his capacity to sympathize.
Curiously, even though Tsotsi cannot remember his mother
at this point, he insists he “know[s]” that mothers do not
love their children or sing to them. His strange insistence

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Chapter 9 Quotes Petah turned to David. ‘Willie no good. You not Willie.
What is your name? Talk! Trust me, man. I help you.’
On she came, until a foot or so away the chain stopped her,
and although she pulled at this with her teeth until her David’s eyes grew round and vacant, stared at the darkness. A
breathing was tense and rattled she could go no further, so she tiny sound, a thin squeaking voice, struggled out: ‘David…’ it
lay down there, twisting her body so that the hindquarters fell said, ‘David! But no more! He dead! He dead too, like Willie, like
apart and, like that, fighting all the time, her ribs heaving, she Joji.’
gave birth to the stillborn litter, and then died beside them.
Related Characters: Petah, Tsotsi (David) (speaker),
Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, David’s David’s Mother (Tondi)
Mother (Tondi)
Related Themes:
Related Themes:
Page Number: 166-167
Related Symbols: Explanation and Analysis
Having run away from home after his mother’s arrest, David
Page Number: 161
(that is, Tsotsi as a child) has met a group of homeless,
Explanation and Analysis orphaned children and gone with them to sleep in pipes
near the river. Because David will not tell the other children
Tsotsi has a flashback to a yellow dog—female, moving
his name, they decide to call him Willie, after a former
strangely—when he first encounters the abandoned baby.
member of their group who recently died of malnutrition.
He keeps having flashbacks to the dog until he regains his
memories, which reveal that the dog was his childhood pet. Petah, the friendliest of the orphan gang, treats David with
The day before his father—whom he had never met—was real sympathy: he sees that David is his own individual, not
supposed to return after years of absence, police arrested simply a replacement for the dead Willie, and offers to help
his mother in a raid enforcing apartheid pass laws and took David. Petah’s kindness toward David shows that sympathy
her away. When his father returned, Tsotsi hid from him in is a common component in human interactions and can
the backyard. The dog attacked his father—and his father spring up even in miserable circumstances.
gave the dog a fatal kick and left. David’s response to Petah shows how his mother’s arrest
This passage resolves the mystery of Tsotsi’s flashbacks. He due to racist apartheid laws has stripped him of his former
first remembers the dog upon receiving the abandoned identity. Having lost his mother and his home, David
baby because the baby was losing his mother. Tsotsi declares his former self “dead”—a declaration suggesting
associates the dog with the traumatic loss of his own that children’s identities fundamentally depend on their
mother (and the destruction of his childhood) because he relationship to their parents. When a child loses his parents,
witnessed the dog’s death the day after the police took his he is not only in danger of neglect and physical
mother away. death—Willie and Joji, other children in the gang who lost
their parents, have both literally died—but also of a
The dog also symbolizes apartheid’s destruction of Black
figurative death, a loss of personal identity. This loss makes
families. Pet dogs are popularly associated with ideal
David vulnerable to later accepting the stereotyped identity
families. Yet Tsotsi’s childhood dog dies due to apartheid:
tsotsi.
because his mother, having been arrested for violating a
racist and unjust apartheid law, is not present to welcome
his father home, the dog reacts to his father as an intruding
stranger. The dog’s defensive reaction leads to the violent So he went out with them the next day and scavenged. The
altercation in which his father kills the dog. Seeing the dog same day an Indian chased him away from his shop door,
die, Tsotsi literally witnesses the death of a family, since the shouting and calling him a tsotsi. When they went back to the
kick that kills her also kills her puppies. Using the dog as a river that night, they started again, trying names on him: Sam,
symbol, then, the novel underscores how hostile apartheid Willie, and now Simon, until he stopped them.
South Africa was to Black family life. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Tsotsi.’

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), Boston

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Related Themes: Explanation and Analysis

The morning after Tsotsi regains his memories, he takes the
Page Number: 168 baby from beneath his bed and contemplates him. That
Tsotsi “at first confused” his childhood self, David, with the
Explanation and Analysis
baby, explains why Tsotsi began having flashbacks to his
Prior to this point, David has slept in the pipes with the past as soon as he saw the baby—the baby’s abandonment
other orphaned children but has not joined in their by his mother reminded him of his own childhood
“scaveng[ing].” Once he becomes hungry enough, however, separation from his mother. In other words, he sympathized
he does joins them—which leads to him choosing the name with the baby. Now that Tsotsi has regained his memories,
(and identity) Tsotsi. his sympathy for the baby has become something more:
As previously mentioned, the word tsotsi is South African identification. For him, his childhood self and the baby are
slang means “gang member” or “thug.” In the novel’s “one and the same person.” He even imagines that the
beginning, Tsotsi seems to embrace this stereotyped “terrible events” he suffered in childhood are the “future
identity: he is leading a gang and committing violent crimes. awaiting the baby.”
He even reacts violently when fellow gang member Boston By suggesting that the baby will suffer what Tsotsi has
tries to suggest that there is more to him than the tsotsi suffered, this passage suggests two things to the reader.
stereotype—beating Boston for asking about his family and First, David suffered because he was a Black child in a racist
for claiming he must have a soul. By introducing Tsotsi in society, apartheid South Africa. Because the baby is also a
this way, the novel leads readers to believe that the tsotsi Black child in the same racist society, this passage is
identity is something Tsotsi has freely chosen. foreshadowing to the reader that the baby, too, may suffer
This passage complicates readers’ assumptions that Tsotsi “terrible events” because of apartheid.
chose to embrace the tsotsi stereotype. The day someone Second, the passage suggests that Tsotsi has a new motive
first calls him a tsotsi, he is a starving 10-year-old to care for the baby. Previously, he was caring for the baby
“scaveng[ing]” for food—not a violent criminal, but a because the baby had triggered memories in him and he
vulnerable child effectively orphaned by the racist laws of hoped to regain more. Now that he has regained his
South African apartheid. That an adult would impose the memories, however, he may still continue caring for the
stereotype of tsotsi (“gang member” or “thug”) on a 10-year- baby—because he identifies with the baby’s
old shows that adult’s virulent anti-Black racism—his “defencelessness,” he may try to protect the baby from the
assumption that all Black males, even children, are “terrible events awaiting it” and thus, in a sense,
inherently criminal and dangerous. In this passage, then, the compensate for his own destroyed childhood.
reader learns that a racist society imposed the tsotsi
stereotype on the child David—only after society had
already called him a tsotsi did he take the name for himself.
‘Last night I was sad and I bent on my knees and did pray
for something and a voice said, “Why should I give you
what you ask me for, when you got no milk for babies.” Please
Chapter 10 Quotes give him to me.’
The baby and David, himself that is, at first confused, had
now merged into one and the same person. The police raid, the
Related Characters: Miriam Ngidi (speaker), Tsotsi (David),
river, and Petah, the spider spinning his web, the grey day and
The Baby, David’s Mother (Tondi)
the smell of damp newspapers were a future awaiting the baby.
It was outside itself. He could sympathize with it in its Related Themes:
defencelessness against the terrible events awaiting it.
Page Number: 181
Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, David’s
Explanation and Analysis
Mother (Tondi)
Tsotsi has found Miriam again and led her back to his room
Related Themes: to feed the baby. This time she comes willingly. Upon
learning Tsotsi is not the baby’s father, Miriam tells Tsotsi
Page Number: 175 the baby is sick and asks to adopt him. In this quotation, she

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implies she wants to adopt him because she believes God Explanation and Analysis
disapproved of her initial unwillingness to help the baby.
Tsotsi is refusing Miriam’s requests to adopt the abandoned
There is no way to determine the truth of Miriam’s claim baby for whom he has been caring, and he has decided to
that a voice spoke in response to her prayer, because the keep the baby himself. Interestingly, when Miriam asks him
novel never represents that scene directly. The reader only to explain his decision, he has difficulty explaining it to
receives Miriam’s account of it. Moreover, Miriam never himself. As the narrator puts it, “the riddle of the yellow
states explicitly that she thinks God was speaking to her. bitch was solved”—in other words, Tsotsi initially kept the
She only says that “a voice” spoke to her, which could refer baby because the baby triggered a flashback to a (female)
to an inner voice—Miriam’s own thoughts accusing her of yellow dog and he was hoping, by keeping the baby around,
ungenerosity—as well as the voice of God. That Miriam to trigger more; now that he has regained his memories and
heard this voice in the context of prayer, however, suggests solved the “riddle,” that motive no longer applies.
that the voice’s words have a religious meaning.
Yet as Tsotsi also notes, since regaining his memories the
That a religious experience increases Miriam’s sympathy baby’s emotional “hold on his life” has only “grown
toward and willingness to help the baby underlines tighter”—he wants to keep the baby more, now, than he did
something the novel has already implied—namely, that while when the yellow dog was still a mystery. Tsotsi claims that
religion may not be powerful enough to change a racist he wants to keep the baby because he “must find out.” He
society like apartheid South Africa, it can encourage does not explain what it is he must find out, but his thoughts
individuals to recognize others’ humanity and human value. offer two clues.
That the voice Miriam hears specifically chides Miriam for First, he thinks: “No more revenge. No more hate.” Before
having “no milk for babies”—not just milk for her own Tsotsi encountered the baby, his knee-jerk reaction to
baby—implies that in particular, adults should be anyone’s attempt to connect with him was hatred. He even
sympathetic toward children and recognize their humanity, violently beat his fellow gang member Boston for asking
even going so far as to treat all children like their own. This questions about his life and suggesting that he had a soul.
attitude contrasts starkly with how apartheid South Africa Since adopting the baby, Tsotsi has rediscovered sympathy
actually treated Black children: as readers know, Tsotsi was and care for others. Yet, at this point, he does not
left homeless when white police arrested his mother for understand the process—how, exactly, the baby has
violating an unjust, racist law. transformed him from a hateful to a sympathetic person.
The nature of the change he has undergone may be one
thing he “must find out.”
‘What are you going to do with him?’ Second, Tsotsi thinks that “the riddle of the yellow bitch was
‘Keep him.’ solved.” What Tsotsi has learned from fully remembering
‘Why?’ the yellow dog is that unjust apartheid laws led to his
mother’s arrest, destroying his family and his childhood. He
He threw back his head, and she saw the shine of desperation
has already identified his childhood self with the baby and
on his forehead as he struggled with that mighty word. Why,
expressed fears that the baby will suffer as he has. By acting
why was he? No more revenge. No more hate. The riddle of the
as a parent to the baby, he may be hoping to change the
yellow bitch was solved—all of this in a few days and in as short
baby’s fate. The other thing he “must find out” may be what
a time the hold on his life by the blind, black, minute hands had
would have happened to him if he had had a parent
grown tighter. Why?
throughout his entire childhood.
‘Because I must find out,’ he said.

Related Characters: Miriam Ngidi, Tsotsi (David) (speaker), Chapter 11 Quotes

The Baby, Boston, David’s Mother (Tondi) ‘Why Boston? What did do it?’
A sudden elation lit up Boston’s face; he tried to smile, but his
Related Themes:
lips wouldn’t move, and his nose started throbbing, but despite
the pain he whispered back at Tsotsi: ‘You are asking me about
Related Symbols:
God.’
Page Number: 182 ‘God.’
‘You are asking me about God, Tsotsi. About God, about God.’

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Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), Boston (speaker), The Related Characters: Isaiah, Miss Marriot, Morris
Baby, Miriam Ngidi, Morris Tshabalala , Rev. Henry Tshabalala , David’s Mother (Tondi), Tsotsi (David)
Ransome
Related Themes:
Related Themes:
Page Number: 211
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis
Explanation and Analysis A churchyard gardener, an elderly Black man named Isaiah,
Tsotsi seeks out Boston, his most educated acquaintance, to has been planting flowers when his condescending and
ask him what has caused the changes in behavior and racist white supervisor, Miss Marriot, criticizes his work and
identity (taking care of the baby, sparing Morris Tshabalala) insists on demonstrating how to plant correctly. Despite her
he has undergone throughout the book. By insisting that rude questions, Isaiah gives her polite yes/no answers.
Tsotsi, in asking about these changes, is really asking about Up to this point, white characters have mainly appeared in
God, Boston is implying two things. the novel as nameless agents of apartheid’s structural
First, Boston is implying that God is real and active in racism: for example, the white crowds whom Morris
human lives—an argument for religion’s relevance to all Tshabalala blames for the loss of his legs or the white police
humankind, including Tsotsi. This implication that God is who arrest David’s mother. By focusing on Black characters,
relevant to Tsotsi’s life will lead Tsotsi to seek out religious their histories, and their interactions, the novel has
experiences later in the novel. demonstrated how apartheid and white supremacy shape
Second, Boston is implying that human sympathy, which these characters’ lives even in the absence of much direct
partially motivated Tsotsi to care for the baby and spare interaction with racist white people.
Morris’s life, ultimately comes from God. The novel has The interactions between Isaiah and Miss Marriot
implied this more subtly in Tsotsi’s earlier vision of constitute one of the first times that the novel represents
sympathy as a light that might lead to an ultimate, an extended interaction between a Black and a white
religiously coded revelation. Now, however, Boston is person. Here, the novel adds an important caveat to its
making the connection between God and sympathy more representation of racism as a primarily structural,
explicit. impersonal phenomenon: interpersonal racism as well as
It is difficult to evaluate how seriously the novel wants the structural racism affects those Black characters, like Isaiah,
reader to take Boston’s claims here. On the one hand, the who must interact with white people. During those
Rev. Henry Ransome has experienced several moments of interactions, in this white supremacist society, all the power
religious despair in the novel, implicitly because God is not resides with the white people, and the Black people must
adequately addressing racism, segregation, and poverty in cater to white people’s prejudices and preferences in order
apartheid South Africa. On the other hand, Miriam’s to maintain “a peaceful existence.”
religious experience during prayer has directly changed her
attitudes and behavior, making her more sympathetic
toward an abandoned baby—which does suggest that God ‘Come man and join in the singing.’
and religion are practically relevant to her. So, though the ‘Me!’
novel is somewhat ambivalent about the relevance of
religion and Christianity in particular to human lives, this ‘I’m telling you anybody can come. It’s the House of God. I ring
quote prompts the reader to expect that it holds His bell. Will you come?’
unexpected meaning for Tsotsi himself. ‘Yes.’
‘Listen tonight, you hear. Listen for me. I will call you to believe
in God.’
Chapter 12 Quotes
To an incredible extent a peaceful existence was Related Characters: Isaiah, Tsotsi (David) (speaker),
dependent upon knowing just when to say no or yes to the Boston, The Baby, Morris Tshabalala
white man.
Related Themes:

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Page Number: 219 Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), The Baby,
Miriam Ngidi
Explanation and Analysis
Related Themes:
Tsotsi has stopped outside the Church of Christ the
Redeemer, where Isaiah gardens. When Isaiah offers Tsotsi
Page Number: 224-225
tea, Tsotsi begins asking questions about the church,
Christianity, and God. Eventually, Isaiah invites Tsotsi to Explanation and Analysis
come to the church’s evening service. This passage implicitly The night before this passage occurs, Tsotsi has gone to
suggests two reasons why Tsotsi, who seems to have no church for the first time. He has also hidden the baby in the
religious background, might find himself interested in demolished township ruins again, because he fears Miriam
Christianity after his brief, earlier conversation with Boston may take the baby from him. The next morning when he
about God. wakes up, however, “what he had thought out last night” is
First, during the novel, Tsotsi has changed from someone on his mind.
who rejects human connection—for example, violently The novel does not explicitly represent what Tsotsi has
beating Boston when Boston tries to understand him—to thought out, but this passage hints at his thoughts’ content.
sympathizing with others, caring for a baby and sparing He remembers “the woman”—that is, Miriam—asking him to
Morris Tshabalala’s life. Tsotsi’s sympathy for others leads come back and thinks that “only one thing” was important
him to believe in common humanity, a group identity that all now. Drawing attention to Miriam’s womanhood and her
people share. When Isaiah asks Tsotsi to “join in the singing,” request that Tsotsi return to her, the novel is implying a
it represents an invitation for Tsotsi to join a larger human possible romantic relationship between them. Since both
community. When Isaiah says “anybody can come” to the Miriam and Tsotsi have babies—hers biological, his
church, he is telling Tsotsi that the church is a potentially adopted—their romantic pairing would lead to the
universal community. Because Tsotsi has been discovering formation of a new family, a replacement for the families
universal humanity over the course of the novel, such an Miriam and Tsotsi have lost due to apartheid. This new
inclusive community may particularly appeal to him. family is likely the “only one thing [that] was important to
Second, Tsotsi may be interested in the Christian focus on him now.”
redemption. When Isaiah first invites Tsotsi to church, The prospect of a new family leads to a final, decisive
Tsotsi exclaims, “Me!” His shock at the invitation suggests change in Tsotsi: he rejects once and for all the tsotsi (“gang
he does not believe himself—a person whom others
member” or “thug”) stereotype and reclaims his full name,
regularly identify as a tsotsi, a “gang member” or
David Madondo. After this point, the novel’s narration itself
“thug”—worthy to enter a church. Yet Isaiah suggests that refers to the character as “David Madondo” or “David”
everyone who hears “His bell” is potentially worthy to enter rather than “Tsotsi”—a sign that the novel endorses David’s
the community of believers. Their conversation thus belief that he has undergone a real identity transformation.
contains an implicit belief in redemption: anyone, including That David and the milkman wish each other peace—a
Tsotsi, can be redeemed by God and change their life. Since traditional religious greeting—highlights that religion has
Tsotsi has undergone significant personal changes for the played a role in David’s transformation. Additionally, that
better during the novel, he may be attracted to Christianity the milkman does not react to David with fear, as characters
for affirming the possibility of this sort of change. have previously done upon seeing him, suggests that his
transformation from Tsotsi to David is somehow physically
apparent to others.
It was a new day and what he had thought out last night
was still there, inside him. Only one thing was important to
him now. ‘Come back,’ the woman had said. ‘Come back, Tsotsi.’ The slum clearance had entered a second and decisive
I must correct her, he thought. ‘My name is David Madondo.’ stage. The white township had grown impatient. The ruins,
He said it aloud in the almost empty street, and laughed. The they said, were being built up again and as many were still
man delivering milk heard him, and looking up said, ‘Peace my coming in as they carried off in lorries to the new locations or in
brother.’ vans to the jails. So they had sent in the bulldozers to raze the
buildings completely to the ground.
‘Peace be with you’, David Madondo replied and carried on his
way.

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Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Miriam Page Number: 226
Ngidi, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Explanation and Analysis
Related Themes: David dies trying to save the baby from the bulldozers re-
razing the demolished Black township to enforce apartheid
Page Number: 225
segregation laws. Although the novel does not explicitly
Explanation and Analysis state what happens to the baby, it seems likely that the
David has hidden the baby in the demolished ruins of the same wall that fell on David also killed the baby. By ending
Black township. Now, the white township—in this passage, with David’s and the baby’s deaths due to apartheid—after
the word simply means “neighborhood” or “suburb”—is all the positive individual change that David has
demanding that the ruins be demolished again, which will undergone—the novel is clearly illustrating that South
surely kill the baby if David cannot rescue him in time. African apartheid is a great evil, hostile to Black life and
Black families.
This passage represents in figurative language the ongoing
threat that apartheid and white supremacy pose to Black The novel is also illustrating that individual transformation,
South African families. New Black settlers have “built up” no matter how heroic, cannot lead to a permanent triumph
the “ruins” of a Black neighborhood, destroyed to enforce over an evil society. Just when the reader believes that
apartheid’s segregation laws. This fact symbolizes how, David has rejected the tsotsi (“gang member” or “thug”)
after apartheid destroyed David’s family by arresting stereotype and gained a new family to replace the family
David’s mother, he has finally begun to build up a new family apartheid took from him, apartheid destroys his second
with Miriam and their babies from the ruins of his old life. family too. Importantly, the people who unearth David’s
body still see him as a “tsotsi,” reducing his identity to a
Yet despite David’s individual triumphs—regaining his stereotype. The white supremacist society of apartheid
memories, learning to sympathize with others, finding a new cannot recognize David’s individual humanity or his growth.
family—he is still a Black person in a violently racist, white
supremacist society. This plot twist, that David’s baby is Though largely pessimistic, the novel’s ending does contain
under physical threat due to apartheid’s segregation laws, an ambiguous element, David’s “beautiful” smile in death.
illustrates how, no matter the positive transformations Previous scenes in the novel, such as David/Tsotsi’s
individual Black characters undergo, the racist society in conversation with Isaiah about Jesus Christ, have in
which they find themselves can at any moment destroy their retrospect foreshadowed that, like Christ, David would
lives. sacrifice his life for another. The earlier scene in which
David/Tsotsi imagined human sympathy as connected to a
larger, implicitly religious “revelation,” meanwhile, hints at a
possible reason for David’s smile—by sacrificing his life in a
They unearthed him minutes later. All agreed that his smile Christlike way trying to save the baby’s, he has actually
was beautiful, and strange for a tsotsi, and that when he experienced a religious revelation in the moment of death.
lay there on his back in the sun, before someone had fetched a The novel may even be suggesting an afterlife that
blanket, they agreed that it was hard to believe what the back compensates for David’s life of suffering.
of his head looked like when you saw the smile.
Yet, clearly, religion has not saved David or the baby on
earth—so the novel may intend the “beautiful” smile
Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby ironically, to show that religion has beneficial elements but
is not powerful enough to change evil systems like
Related Themes: apartheid.

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SUMMARY AND ANAL

ANALYSIS
YSIS
The color-coded icons under each analysis entry make it easy to track where the themes occur most prominently throughout the
work. Each icon corresponds to one of the themes explained in the Themes section of this LitChart.

CHAPTER 1
Four people are sitting in silence as they drink, listen to an old By implying that these four people do the same thing “at about the
woman speak in the backyard, and examine the shadows same time” every day, the novel suggests they are stuck in habits or
outside in the street to check their growth. Then, “as always patterns of behavior. Meanwhile, “tsotsi” is a South African slang
happened at about the same time,” the youngest of the four, term meaning “gangster” or “thug.” That Tsotsi uses this slang term
Tsotsi, sits forward and clasps his hands “in the manner of as his name suggests he has embraced a stereotype—the stereotype
prayer.” of a violent criminal—as his identity. Finally, it may be ironic that the
novel describes Tsotsi, who identifies with violent criminality,
clasping his hands “in the manner of prayer”—yet, at the same time,
this detail may be foreshadowing the importance of religion in the
novel.

Before the silence, another of the four, Boston, was telling a This passage confirms that the four men always gather in Tsotsi’s
story. Boston habitually tells stories to the other four when room in the same way and wait for him to tell them what to do,
they gather in Tsotsi’s room, drink, and wait for nightfall and for which suggests that they act out of habit, not exercising their full
Tsotsi to inform them of the night’s plan. The other two—Die capacity for choice. None of the characters seems to go by his given
Aap, nicknamed for his “long arms,” and Butcher—listen to name. As already mentioned, “tsotsi” is a slang term meaning
Boston. Whereas Die Aap listens hard, Butcher finds Boston’s “gangster.” “Die Aap” means “monkey” in Afrikaans, a white minority
stories too long and only listens to pass the time. language in South Africa—a racist nickname for a Black man in a
white supremacist society. Although the novel does not explicitly
state here that “Boston” and “Butcher” are nicknames, they do not
sound like real, given names. The use of such nicknames suggests
that as Black men in apartheid South Africa, they aren’t able to
express their full, non-stereotyped individual identities.

Die Aap interrupts Boston’s story to ask “why.” Boston laughs, This passage suggests that the characters spend time together out
says it was because of a woman, and finishes the story. Silence of habit, not because they are genuine friends—although Die Aap is
falls. Tsotsi clasps his hands, and Boston, Die Aap, and Butcher loyal to Tsotsi, Butcher and Boston may not be. The passage thus
look at him—Boston smiling, Die Aap emotionless, and Butcher foreshadows conflict within the group.
full of “impatience and hate.” Tsotsi notes their reactions. He
thinks that while he can trust Die Aap, he cannot trust Butcher.
He also thinks that Boston is afraid of him.

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Boston asks Tsotsi what’s going on. He meets Tsotsi’s eyes but Although the novel does not clarify what “take one on the trains”
then drops his own. Tsotsi states that it’s Friday and suggests means, it sounds ominous. Boston’s fearful reaction, sweating and
they “take one on the trains.” Butcher agrees. Boston, sweating refusing to look at Tsotsi, strengthens the reader’s sense of
and not looking at Tsotsi, asks why. Tsotsi asks why not. Boston foreboding. That Tsotsi, Butcher, and Die Aap all agree to “take one
tries to fake a yawn, can’t pull it off, and points out that on the trains” implies that this activity is in line with the group’s
sometimes the ones Tsotsi picks don’t have anything. Tsotsi usual habits—Boston is the only one who suggests a change. Toward
denies he ever makes mistakes. Die Aap agrees with Tsotsi, and the passage’s end, the novel reveals that “Butcher” is indeed a
Butcher demands they leave. Tsotsi continues to stare at stereotyping nickname, one that implies Butcher is going to
Boston, who eventually agrees. Butcher retrieves a bicycle butcher—that is, kill—someone with his bicycle spoke.
spoke from a box, which is “the reason for his name. He had
never missed.” The four men leave.

Tsotsi leads the other men down an unkempt street. It’s dusk. This passage gestures toward the racial and political context in
As the four men walk through the township, they end a which Tsotsi finds himself. First, he lives in a township, that is, a
moment of “reckoning” in which various people in the township segregated non-white neighborhood or suburb in apartheid South
note new demolitions, inadequate money, and other hardships. Africa. Most of the township population is poor and worried that
When the men pass, the township population fears them and the government may demolish their homes and relocate them as
hides inside. Tsotsi is aware of this phenomenon and accepts it part of a larger apartheid policy of enforcing strict racial
as natural. segregation. By giving this racial and political context, the novel
hints that while Tsotsi habitually accepts his stereotyped criminal
identity and others’ fear or hatred of him as natural, these
phenomena may in fact derive from his political context: apartheid,
which is not natural but man-made.

At the train station, the four men select a man named Gumboot Under apartheid, non-white people’s travel was restricted. They
Dhlamini as their target. Gumboot is a hopeful man with a were forbidden from entering “white” areas unless they had a pass
sense of humor. He left his pregnant wife and walked a showing they were employed in those areas. Gumboot has to leave
thousand miles to the “Golden City” to find work. When he his wife and unborn child behind while he works in the “Golden
arrived, he lived in a township and worked in a mine for a year. City”—that is, Johannesburg—due to these white supremacist
In a week, he plans to return home to his wife with the money apartheid laws, which illustrates how apartheid broke up non-white
he has made. families.

After work, Gumboot is at the train station planning to take the As a criminal in a Black township, Tsotsi illustrates how the
train back to the township, but he makes “three mistakes.” First, economic oppression and deprivation of Black people under
he smiles because he’s anticipating the weekend, having apartheid’s white supremacist legal system has forced some young
written to his wife that he is coming home—and Tsotsi notices Black men into crime—at which point they harm other young Black
his bright smile. Second, he is wearing a red and silver tie, which men like Gumboot Dhlamini, whose very joy at the thought of his
he bought to impress his wife. The tie helps Tsotsi track him in family makes him a target. Thus this passage shows how apartheid
the crowd. Third, Gumboot opens his pay packet to buy his destroys Black families and Black people’s joy.
ticket—showing people he has money—and rushes to the
platform.

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Tsotsi follows Gumboot onto the train. Gumboot notices that This passage reveals what the ominous phrase “take one on the
his tie got messed up amid the crowd and tries to fix it, but he trains” means—it means to rob and kill a passenger, using the
can’t use his arms because Die Aap has grabbed hold of them. commuter crowd as cover. That Tsotsi insults Gumboot’s mother
As Butcher stabs Gumboot with the bicycle spoke, Tsotsi while Gumboot is dying suggests that Tsotsi’s motives for the
murmurs something offensive about Gumboot’s mother into murder aren’t merely economic. For some reason, Tsotsi wants to
Gumboot’s ear—Tsotsi has realized he can fix a hateful elicit hatred from his victim.
expression on his victims’ faces by insulting them as they die.
The four men keep Gumboot upright, and Boston, though
sickened, steals his money. At the next station, embarking
passengers find Gumboot’s corpse.

CHAPTER 2
Boston demands to know what it proves that he was sick when The sparse furnishings and “rotten” floor in Soekie’s drinking
they killed and robbed Gumboot. Butcher laughs and tells him establishment show the poverty of Black township life under
he was “sick like a dog.” Boston again demands to know what apartheid. Boston demanding to know what it proves that he was
that proves. They are drinking at Soekie’s, a shebeen (that is, sick—it seems he vomited at some point after he helped murder
illegal drinking establishment) in the township. The police often Gumboot—implies that he unwillingly sympathized with Gumboot
close down shebeens in the township, prompting new ones to but doesn’t want to admit it to other members of the gang.
open. Soekie’s has one table, a few chairs, empty walls, and a Butcher’s laughter and claim that Boston was “sick like a dog,”
“rotten” floor. Soekie lives there in a back room. meanwhile, both indicate that Butcher doesn’t share Boston’s
sympathy toward Gumboot and hint that dog imagery may be
important later in the novel.

Tsotsi, Die Aap, and Butcher sit at the table while Boston That Boston hits the incoherent woman in the face shows that he is
stands. An incoherent woman sits in the corner. Boston again emotionally volatile and violent, despite his sympathy for Gumboot.
demands to know what his sickness proves. The woman shouts, By hitting her, he may be trying to prove to the other members of his
“Come here Johnny,” but the men ignore her. The woman asks gang that despite getting sick after the murder, he is still capable of
for Johnny to kiss her, prompting Boston to hit her twice in the violence. The squalid surroundings—only four customers, a terribly
face. Butcher laughs and tells Boston not to go too far. Boston drunk woman, casual violence, bad service—again emphasize the
wanders the room. Butcher, his drink finished, calls for another economic oppression of Black townships under apartheid.
and eyeballs the woman in the corner. Soekie responds from
the other room but doesn’t appear. Butcher yells her name, and
she yells back.

Tsotsi notes that Boston, wandering the room, is searching for Here the novel makes explicit that Boston vomited and cried after
an explanation for his vomiting and tears after they killed helping murder Gumboot. Tsotsi’s decision to behave exactly as
Gumboot. Tsotsi, on the way to Soekie’s, resolved to keep usual, and his hatred of Boston for introducing changing feelings
exactly to his usual behavior, in part because something feels into his life, reveal how psychologically dependent Tsotsi is on his
different to him. Tsotsi blames Boston for this feeling. His habits. Tsotsi’s hatred for Boston, together with his earlier desire
hatred of Boston motivated his decision to kill someone on the that Gumboot hate him, hint that hatred is Tsotsi’s main way of
train. Tsotsi believes Boston has changed the feeling of things relating to other people.
since he joined the gang six months ago, because Boston asks
questions.

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After Boston joined the gang, he asked what Tsotsi’s real name By turning Tsotsi’s background into a mystery, this passage prompts
was, and Tsotsi walked away instead of responding. Die Aap the reader to wonder what Tsotsi’s true identity is and why he hates
explained to Boston that Tsotsi “hated questions about himself,” questions about himself. The passage also emphasizes once again
and that he is a mystery. Boston stopped asking questions, but that, at this point, the main emotion motivating Tsotsi is hatred: he
Tsotsi perceives questions in Boston’s eyes when Boston hates questions about himself, and he picks jobs to disturb Boston
drinks. Tsotsi thinks letting Boston ask questions with his eyes because he hates Boston.
is a mistake and picking gang jobs that disturb Boston is an
even bigger mistake. Boston has realized Tsotsi is picking jobs
to disturb him, which has prompted him to ask questions aloud
again.

Soekie, a “coloured woman in her fifties,” brings more alcohol to In apartheid South Africa, “coloured” was a legally enforced racial
the men’s table. Though born in a European area of the city, she classification referring to people of mixed race. Since Soekie was
lives in the township because her mother didn’t want her. She born in a European—that is, white—neighborhood, her mother was
writes to her mother asking to know her birthday but receives probably white. The novel implies that Soekie’s white mother had a
no reply. On her way back from the table, Soekie tells the romantic relationship with a Black man, became pregnant, and then
woman in the corner, Rosie, that she needs to leave. The rejected their child, either due to her own racism or to protect
woman starts crying, and Soekie returns to the back room. herself from legal repercussions (it was illegal under apartheid for a
white person to have a sexual relationship with a non-white person).
With Soekie’s background, then, the novel is giving the reader
another example of racism and apartheid destroying families and
separating children from their parents.

Boston braces his hands on the table and says “decency.” Boston knows what the word “decency” means, while Butcher and
Butcher asks Boston what he’s talking about, and Boston claims Tsotsi do not (or claim they don’t). On one level, this detail hints that
that decency made him sick. Butcher asks what decency is, and Boston may have had some education, which Butcher and Tsotsi
Boston replies that it’s what Butcher isn’t. He then sits beside were denied due to their poverty. Tsotsi’s inward contempt for
Tsotsi and asks whether he knows what decency means. Tsotsi “books and words” while fighting with Boston also suggests that
thinks Boston wants to wound him and inwardly expresses Tsotsi thinks Boston is more educated than he is. On another level,
contempt for “books and words.” He denies knowing about that Boston knows what “decency” means, while Butcher and Tsotsi
“decency” and asks Boston what it is. Boston says it’s why he don’t, suggests that knowing what “decency” means symbolizes
was sick, and Tsotsi asks whether it’s a sickness. Boston laughs feeling sympathy for other people—Boston feels sympathy for
and says yes—it made him sick and it killed their victim. Tsotsi Gumboot, while Butcher and Tsotsi do not.
tells Boston to go to the doctor.

Butcher keeps calling for Soekie. Boston leans closer to Tsotsi, This passage hints that Tsotsi may have accepted the stereotyped
says he wants to have a conversation, and asks Tsotsi’s age. identity of “tsotsi”—gangster—because he has lost his memories and
Tsotsi loathes Boston’s questions because he can’t answer thus his true identity. At the same time, by claiming that Tsotsi’s
them. He has few memories—fragments of children name is “the name, in a way, of all men,” the passage suggests that
“scavenging,” the police, and loneliness. Tsotsi doesn’t think anyone in Tsotsi’s situation might commit similar crimes.
about himself, the past, or the future. He lives in the present
and “his name was the name, in a way, of all men.”

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Tsotsi asks Boston why he cares. Boston says he’s older than By saying he used to wear a tie like Gumboot’s, Boston shows that
Tsotsi, so Tsotsi should listen to him. At Tsotsi’s age, he wanted he can see himself in the gang’s victim—in other words, he is able to
to be a teacher and wore a tie like the one the man they personally empathize with the victim. That Boston says the name
murdered was wearing because of “decency.” Tsotsi again tells Jesus Christ with “no blasphemy,” meanwhile, suggests that he isn’t
Boston to go see a doctor. Boston begins to say something just swearing but trying to talk to Tsotsi about religion—which hints
about Jesus Christ with “no blasphemy.” that Boston’s ability to feel sympathy for others may have
something to do with his religious beliefs.

Soekie refills the men’s drinks, gives Butcher a “dagga” In the South African context, “dagga” means cannabis. That Soekie
cigarette, and again tells Rosie to leave. Butcher demands tells Butcher “no rough stuff” suggests she thinks he might hurt
Soekie stop trying to move Rosie. Soekie notes Rosie used to be Rosie. By leaving the situation instead of trying to protect Rosie
her friend and tells Butcher “no rough stuff.” She returns to the from Butcher, Soekie reveals that she is so used to brutality that she
back room. does not believe she has the power or the choice to protect anyone,
even a former friend.

Butcher and Die Aap smoke the cigarette while Butcher walks This passage suggests, without stating explicitly, that Butcher and
to Rosie and reaches under her dress’s skirt. She begs him, “not Die Aap take Rosie outside to rape her. Later, her screams are
in here,” so he begins pushing her outside. Die Aap calls to further evidence that she’s being violently assaulted. Once again,
Butcher, and Butcher invites him to join, so all three of them go Boston expresses sympathy for a victim of the gang—in this case,
outside. Tsotsi, alone with Boston, wants to flee but acts Rosie—without, however, doing anything to help the victim, which
“outwardly the same, as always.” He and Boston hear a yell from suggests that he lacks the courage or believes he lacks the power to
outside, and Boston asks where the others went. Tsotsi glances intervene. Tsotsi, meanwhile, clings to his habits, acting “outwardly
at Rosie’s empty chair. As they hear another scream, Boston the same, as always,” because he is psychologically dependent on
swears. Tsotsi asks whether he’s feeling sick again, and Boston his routines and afraid that Boston’s sympathies and questions will
replies, “One’s enough.” Tsotsi denies the comparison between somehow disrupt his life.
Rosie and Gumboot. When Boston asks why, Tsotsi points out
Rosie won’t be murdered.

Boston asks Tsotsi whether he feels nothing for Gumboot or In this passage, Boston is not only expressing sympathy for the
Rosie. Tsotsi asks what he means. Boston takes out a knife, gang’s victims, Gumboot and Rosie, but trying to sympathize with
slices his arm, and says that when they killed Gumboot, he felt Tsotsi—to understand his psychology. Tsotsi, having embraced a
like that inside. He asks whether anything makes Tsotsi feel like stereotyped “gangster” identity, does not want to be understood as a
that. Tsotsi thinks he hates Boston more than ever, and unique, psychologically complex individual. So, he falls back on his
knowing he’s going to “do something about it” is what allows habitual emotional reaction—hatred—in response to Boston’s
him to meet Boston’s eyes. He reflects that Boston is trying to attempts to connect with him.
illuminate Tsotsi’s inner world, where nobody—including Tsotsi
himself—ever goes.

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Boston asks whether a woman ever hurt Tsotsi and about Boston’s questions about Tsotsi’s parents and dog foreshadow the
Tsotsi’s parents, sister, and dog. Tsotsi doesn’t respond. Boston importance these figures may have in Tsotsi’s mysterious, forgotten
whispers that Tsotsi must have a soul—everyone does. Tsotsi past. Tsotsi’s violent response to Boston’s questions about his past,
punches Boston, who falls. Tsotsi hits him more. Slurring, meanwhile, suggests both that the past is important to an
Boston tells Tsotsi that eventually he’ll experience feelings and individual’s identity and that Tsotsi has rejected his genuine identity
won’t know how to react: “God help you on that day.” Tsotsi in favor of a stereotyped one. Finally, since Boston claims religious
begins kicking Boston, and Soekie comes out of the back room concepts like “soul” and “God” are relevant to Tsotsi, the novel hints
to try to stop him. Butcher and Die Aap reenter the room and that religion will be important to Tsotsi’s character development
pull Tsotsi away, and then Tsotsi leaves. going forward.

CHAPTER 3
Leaving Soekie’s, Tsotsi passes Rosie but ignores her. Boston’s Tsotsi ignoring Rosie—when he knows Butcher and Die Aap have
words keep playing in his mind. Tsotsi watches a house party just raped her—emphasizes once again his lack of sympathy for his
across the street and sees two girls run from the house chased gang’s victims. Yet Boston’s argument for sympathy and his religious
by a drunk man. He almost manages to focus on the moment language have clearly affected Tsotsi: when he sees a church, he
when the drunk man falls in a way that reminds him of Boston runs away “like a man possessed,” a figure of speech that refers to
on the floor. Walking along, Tsotsi passes a church and begins demonic possession and suggests that Tsotsi is in some sense
to run “like a man possessed” out of the township toward the opposed to or afraid of God.
white suburb.

Tsotsi runs until his mind goes blank and then stops under a By mentioning that police prowl the white suburb—presumably to
lamppost. Seeing headlights, he realizes it may be police—they keep out non-white people—the novel reminds the reader that in
prowl the white suburb—so he slips into the darkness. Walking apartheid South Africa, the law served primarily not to uphold
aimlessly, he sees a stand of bluegum trees and decides to rest justice or protect all citizens, but to enforce segregation and oppress
there. As soon as he sits under a tree, he remembers Boston young Black men like Tsotsi. Tsotsi’s conclusion that the gang is
again. Just as he recruited Die Aap for his strength and Butcher failing because Boston asked too many questions about Tsotsi’s
for his violence, Tsotsi recruited Boston for his intelligence, forgotten past, meanwhile, reveals how frightened Tsotsi is of his
which helps the gang elude capture. Tsotsi wonders why the own true identity.
arrangement stopped working. He concludes that it’s because
Boston asked questions Tsotsi didn’t know the answers to.

Tsotsi imagines his inner life as “darkness.” When he sleeps, he Tsotsi’s knife, a violent weapon, represents his stereotyped identity
doesn’t dream, and both his outer and inner worlds are dark. To as a “gangster.” He uses his daily ritual surrounding the knife to
keep this from bothering him, he rigidly follows a few rules. reinforce his “gangster” identity and to distract himself from his own
First, every morning when he wakes up remembering nothing, inner life. By comparing the knife to a “fetish”—a magical object
he immediately checks his knife. He tests its sharpness and associated by European colonizers with indigenous African
sharpens it if it’s dull. Otherwise, he plays with it. It makes him religions—that protects Tsotsi from “bad spirits,” the novel seems to
feel better: “The knife was not only his weapon, but also a be associating indigenous African religious beliefs with violence, in
fetish, a talisman that conjured away bad spirits and contrast with Christianity, which it has so far associated with
established him securely in his life.” sympathy. Despite the novel’s critique of apartheid and white
supremacy, then, it may be implicitly reinforcing racist assumptions
about indigenous African religions here.

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Second, Tsotsi refuses to think about himself or try to In this passage, interestingly, Tsotsi’s refusal to remember his past
remember his own past. He finds this rule difficult to follow, and his true identity coincides with his refusal to sympathize: Tsotsi
because sometimes the external world elicits vague memories ignores Petah’s requests for help both because he doesn’t want to
from him. For example, “the smell of wet newspaper” is remember Petah and because he doesn’t sympathize with Petah’s
suggestive to him. One time, he was playing dice on the street distress. Thus, the passage suggests that memory is necessary to
when a policeman walked by, and Tsotsi thought he recognized maintain a true, individual identity—and a true, individual identity is
the beaten young man (later revealed to be Petah) in his necessary to be able to sympathize with others.
custody. When the young man saw Tsotsi, he looked excited
and smiled. When Tsotsi didn’t acknowledge him, the young
man called Tsotsi “David,” identified himself as “Petah,” and
asked for help. Tsotsi, ignoring him, continued to play dice.

Third, Tsotsi won’t allow people to ask questions about him, This passage includes the novel’s first account of Tsotsi’s religious
because questions make him aware of “the vast depths of his beliefs. In contrast with Boston’s implied Christianity, Tsotsi believes
darkness.” These empty depths threaten him with a in a “nothingness” that is more real than “men’s prayers”—in other
“nothingness,” which he fears. Tsotsi believes that hiding words, Tsotsi does not seem to believe in God or in any ultimate
beneath external reality, including “men’s prayers,” is meaning to life.
nothingness. Violence allows Tsotsi to assert himself against
this terrifying nothingness.

Tsotsi, tired of thinking, stands to leave when he hears Just as Butcher and Die Aap raped Rosie seemingly as a matter of
footsteps. Hiding behind a bluegum tree, he sees a young Black habit, without thinking much about their actions, so Tsotsi reacts in
woman carrying something and glancing behind her. As she a stereotyped “gangster” fashion to the appearance of a woman
approaches, Tsotsi sees she’s carrying a shoebox. Heartbeat alone—he moves to assault her.
quickening, Tsotsi moves through the trees to intercept her. As
she enters the trees, he grabs her, puts a hand over her mouth
to muffle her scream, and shoves her against a tree.

Tsotsi puts his knee between her legs and, while she struggles That the woman looks at the shoebox containing her baby “with a
and holds tighter to the shoebox, examines her. She pulls her horror deeper than her fear of” Tsotsi—and that she subsequently
mouth free and screams again. Something about the shoebox abandons her baby to Tsotsi, a strange man who seemed about to
catches his attention, and he moves away. She looks at the sexually assault her—suggests that something has gone terribly
shoebox “with a horror deeper than her fear of him.” She wrong in the relationship between mother and child here. This
pushes the shoebox at him and, when he takes it, runs away. wrongness foreshadows the importance of failed and destroyed
The shoebox lid falls off, and Tsotsi sees a baby inside. He parent-child relationships in the rest of the novel.
recognizes that what made him move away from the woman
was the sound of a baby crying.

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CHAPTER 4
Cassim is trying to sell a woman fabric in his shop when a young As soon as Tsotsi walks into Cassim’s shop, Cassim is looking around
man (Tsotsi) walks in. Cassim checks who else is in the shop, to make sure there are “enough” people to protect him from Tsotsi.
counts eight people, and judges it “enough.” He looks at Tsotsi Cassim and his wife look at Tsotsi and see a “type,” not an individual.
and sees a bad “type.” He sells fabric to the woman, looks again, This detail suggests that while Tsotsi has chosen to embrace his
and sees Tsotsi is gone. When he asks his wife whether she saw stereotyped “gangster” identity, other people also impose that
him, his wife replies, “God forgive us.” Tsotsi comes back half an stereotype on him. It also suggests that apartheid’s white
hour later. Cassim, scared, gives an older male customer extra supremacist ideology affects not only how white people see non-
tobacco and tells the customer frenetically about his mother white people, but also how non-white people see each other.
back in India and about Indian history. Again, Tsotsi leaves. Although Cassim is Indian, another legally oppressed racial class
Cassim wonders aloud to his wife what Tsotsi wanted. under South African apartheid, he seems to have absorbed racist
stereotypes about young Black men.

Tsotsi comes back when there are no other customers. Cassim simply cannot believe that Tsotsi is trying to find milk for a
Cassim’s wife and children hide in a back room. Tsotsi demands baby. His disbelief reveals that due to his stereotypes about poor
milk, but Cassim thinks he must have misheard. Tsotsi again young Black men like Tsotsi, he cannot imagine Tsotsi in the role of
demands milk. Cassim, so afraid he cannot see Tsotsi’s face, parent or caretaker. By revealing that Tsotsi cannot read,
asks what kind. Tsotsi says, “Baby milk.” Cassim runs to the door meanwhile, the novel hints at the poverty and lack of education
behind which his family is hiding and says, “Baby milk!” His from which Tsotsi has suffered in his mysterious past.
family starts crying because they think Tsotsi has stabbed
Cassim. Their tears remind Cassim of something. He runs to
Tsotsi, tells him he wants condensed milk, and grabs a tin. Tsotsi
examines the tin. Cassim, realizing Tsotsi can’t read the label,
tells Tsotsi it’s excellent baby milk. Tsotsi pays Cassim and
leaves.

Tsotsi, leaving Cassim’s store, makes himself stop while holding Tsotsi, like Cassim, has embraced negative stereotypes about
the tin to show himself he doesn’t care whether anyone is himself and does not feel “right” taking on the positive role of parent
watching him, even though it doesn’t seem “right” to him to buy or caretaker—yet, curiously, he takes on the role anyway.
baby milk.

It’s Saturday. On Saturdays, people are happy because the work By describing what people habitually do on Saturdays, the novel
week is over, they’ve been paid, and the next day is Sunday, also reminds us that most people, not just Tsotsi, follow habits or
not a workday. Tsotsi ignores this Saturday behavior because patterns of behavior. Tsotsi’s secretiveness when he gets back to his
he recognizes it. He rushes home, reinforces the door with a room reminds the reader that he, by contrast, is doing something
chair, blocks a hole in the wall with some wood, and removes unusual and strange for him: assuming a caretaking, parental role.
the shoebox from under his bed. Although the baby smells, Tsotsi’s association of the baby with “man”—that is, with all
Tsotsi is too shocked by its being to notice: “This was man. This mankind—suggests that in addition to having stereotyped identities
small, almost ancient, very useless and abandoned thing was and real, individual identities, people can also have true group
the beginning of a man.” identities like “human.” By attributing the group identity of “man” to
the baby—an identity that Tsotsi, of course, also shares—Tsotsi may
be starting to identify with and thus sympathize with the baby.

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Tsotsi, becoming aware of the smell, lays a coat on his table, This passage reveals Tsotsi’s ambivalent feelings about taking on a
removes the baby from the box, and puts it on the coat. He feels parental or caretaking role. On the one hand, he is “proud” of caring
“proud” for using the coat but then “frown[s] at himself.” for the baby, but on the other hand, he “frown[s]” at his own
Deducing the bad smell is coming from the baby, not the box, pride—which implies that he thinks pride in caretaking is
Tsotsi tries to figure out what to do. He decides to take off the incompatible with the stereotyped “gangster” identity he has
baby’s “rags” and replace them with his own clothes. cultivated.

Tsotsi fetches a shirt from the cardboard box he uses as a That the baby has been wrapped in “a torn petticoat and an old pair
dresser. Unwrapping the baby, he notices its rags used to be “a of blue bloomers”—that is, women’s underclothes—hints that his
torn petticoat and an old pair of blue bloomers.” The baby cries, mother did want to care for him (she took the trouble to wrap him)
which disconcerts Tsotsi. When he has unwrapped the baby, he but lacked the necessary resources (she couldn’t afford baby
realizes with surprise that the baby is male. Lifting him out of clothes). Given the poverty in which apartheid keeps the novel’s
the rags, Tsotsi sees that the baby has been lying in feces. He Black characters, this detail may be implying that a lack of
cleans the baby with some of the rags, rewraps him in his shirt, economic opportunity in a white supremacist society prevented the
and returns him to the shoebox. woman from being able to provide for her child and thus made her
desperate enough to abandon him.

Tsotsi looks at the tin, whose label he recognizes but can’t read. Tsotsi wishes for his one educated acquaintance, Boston, to help
He remembers trying to feed the baby bread and water that him with the baby, despite having violently attacked Boston the last
morning. He knows condensed milk and baby’s milk aren’t the time they talked—which suggests both how seriously Tsotsi takes
same, but Cassim told him the tin’s label said baby’s milk. The caring for the baby and how out of his depth he feels in assuming a
baby keeps crying. Tsotsi wishes Boston was here, but he cuts parental role.
off that thought because it’s “too late.” He tells the baby that it’ll
drink the condensed milk the same way he does.

Tsotsi pokes holes in the tin with his knife, tries the milk, and Previously, Tsotsi’s knife reinforced his stereotyped “gangster”
pours some onto a spoon. He gives some to the baby, who identity. Now, he is using it, rather awkwardly and inappropriately,
stops crying. After feeding the baby 10 spoonsful, Tsotsi stops to open a milk tin for a baby—a use that represents Tsotsi’s shift
and looks out the window. He worries that Butcher and Die away from his “gangster” identity and toward a parental role. Yet
Aap may visit soon and discover him taking care of the baby. Tsotsi still identifies somewhat with the mindless gangster
Tsotsi decides he needs to take the baby elsewhere. He stereotype: he doesn’t want the other gang members to know about
considers taking him to Soekie but imagines her asking where the baby, and he refuses to explore his own inner world by thinking
and why he obtained a baby. Then, he asks himself why he took about his motives for accepting the baby.
the baby but quickly dismisses that question in favor of the
more practical question: where.

Out the window, Tsotsi sees “one of the demolition squads,” Under apartheid law, people had to live in racially segregated
men whose job it is to destroy the township piece by piece. He neighborhoods. To enforce segregation, the government would order
decides to stash the baby in one of the deserted, demolished demolished any non-white neighborhoods they thought were too
areas, near the white suburb. Tsotsi packs up the milk and close to white neighborhoods and force the non-white residents to
spoon, puts the lid over the baby in the shoebox, and leaves his move elsewhere. The “demolition squads” that Tsotsi sees have the
room. job of destroying the non-white neighborhoods near the white
suburb.

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Walking through the ruins, Tsotsi does not think about why the The anecdote about MaRhabatse illustrates how apartheid’s
demolitions occurred. The ruins are deserted. The only people destruction of non-white neighborhoods to enforce segregation
who used to visit them were children who “scavenge[d]” or cruelly uprooted non-white individuals who had been living in the
played there, but even the children have now deserted this same community for a long time. That Tsotsi doesn’t think about the
place. Tsotsi decides to put the baby in the ruin that used to be reasons for the demolitions implies that he ignores not only his
a woman named MaRhabatse’s house. The men demolishing individual past and identity but his group identity as a member of a
the house had to remove the door to her room because she historically oppressed class, Black South Africans.
was so large she couldn’t get through. Her exit foreshadowed
the destruction of the whole township. Tsotsi decides on her
house’s ruin because part of its roof is still in place, and he
wants the baby to have shade.

Tsotsi opens the shoebox to check on the baby, puts it in the Before encountering the baby, Tsotsi clung tightly to his stereotyped
shadowed corner, and thinks. He has realized that taking and “gangster” activity and violent habits. When he compares taking
caring for the baby doesn’t “fit into the pattern of his life.” Tsotsi care of the baby to playing dice, he is acknowledging that in taking
asks himself why he’s cared for the baby, when usually he kills. on a parental role, he is gambling with—and may lose—his whole
He wonders whether he plans to kill the baby in some special previous identity and “the pattern of his life.”
way. Although Tsotsi wishes that were the case, he realizes that
he is “chancing his hand at a game he [has] never dared play and
the baby [is] the dice.”

Tsotsi recalls the details of the night before: the baby’s cry, the Tsotsi experiences his flashback to the yellow dog immediately after
woman giving him the shoebox, the lid coming off and revealing the desperate woman abandons her baby with him—thus, the novel
the baby. All of a sudden, Tsotsi had a memory of a “yellow clearly connects the yellow dog to the idea of failed or destroyed
bitch”—that is, a yellow dog, which is female—“crawling” at him families. Yet the dog remains mysterious. For example, the reader
and “whimper[ing].” Tsotsi came back from the memory does not know why it was “crawling” or “whimper[ing]” or in what
kneeling and saw the baby on the ground. The baby had context Tsotsi saw it. This mystery hints at revelations yet to come.
summoned a memory of Tsotsi’s, which made him curious—and Meanwhile, Tsotsi’s realization that he wants to remember his past
terrified him, because he’d never wanted to know about his is a major turning point for the character: he is moving further from
past before. He now realizes that he kept the baby because the his stereotyped “gangster” identity and beginning to seek his true,
baby inspired a memory, and he wanted it to happen again. individual identity.
Tsotsi leaves the baby in the demolished ruins but resolves to
come back to feed him the following day.

CHAPTER 5
The same Saturday Tsotsi takes the baby to the ruins and thinks The authorities’ half-hearted and unsuccessful attempts to decorate
though his behavior, Gumboot Dhlamini’s funeral occurs, and the Black township’s cemetery shows how the South African
Boston regains consciousness. The funeral occurs at a plot of government under apartheid neglected and oppressed its Black
ground where people were already burying their loved ones citizens. That the Rev. Henry Ransome doesn’t know Gumboot
and where the authorities, after the fact, put up a fence and Dhlamini’s name, meanwhile, suggests that while the Reverend may
planted some trees. Termites ate the fence, and the trees have good intentions, religious ministry is not enough to overcome
mostly died. The “Reverend Henry Ransome of the Church of racism and segregation under apartheid: although the novel has not
Christ the Redeemer in the township” performs the funeral. explicitly stated this, it is implied that Gumboot was Black while the
The gravedigger, Big Jacob, asks the Reverend who Gumboot Reverend is white, and it seems the white Reverend does not know
is, but the Reverend doesn’t know. He walks back to his church his Black potential congregants very well.
in distress.

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Boston wakes up to see a boy, playing with a bicycle-wheel rim, Various details in this passage—that a child is using a bicycle-wheel
watching him. Die Aap and Butcher have deposited Boston in a rim as a toy, that someone has stolen Boston’s pants, and so
back alley. This is the third time Boston has woken since Tsotsi forth—illustrate the poverty in which the Black township lives under
beat him. The previous times, he passed out again from the apartheid. Boston’s thought, “It’s all finished now,” hints that while
pain. This time, he sits up and notices someone has stolen his he disliked the gang’s violence, he may have derived his identity
pants. He sees “a badly torn khaki pair” in the alley. Boston tries from membership in the gang and feels that his life has ended since
to say something, can’t, and waves at the khakis. The boy runs Tsotsi, the gang’s leader, has rejected him.
away. Boston creeps to the trousers, but movement causes him
pain, and he ends up weeping. The boy returns to stare at
Boston. Boston exits the alley without knowing his destination,
noting what Tsotsi did to him and thinking, “It’s all finished now.”

Butcher and Die Aap are waiting on the street outside Tsotsi’s This passage reveals how Butcher and Die Aap are trapped in habits
room, arguing about whether Tsotsi will show up. Neither and appear to lack control over their own lives. When an
knows whether Tsotsi beating Boston means the gang has unexpected event like Tsotsi beating Boston interrupts the gang’s
broken up. Butcher and Die Aap really began worrying about habits, they do not know what to do. Rather than making choices
the gang the day after the beating, when they didn’t have Tsotsi for themselves, they feel they need someone else, Tsotsi, to make
to tell them what to do. They wandered around all day until choices for them.
they arrived outside Tsotsi’s. They’ve just resolved to leave
when they spot Tsotsi walking up the street.

Tsotsi walks past Butcher and Die Aap without speaking Once again, members of the gang—in this case, Butcher—seem to
because he hasn’t decided what to do about them. When a have a habitual reaction upon encountering a woman who is alone:
woman with a baby walks past, Butcher yells at her to feed the automatically, without thinking about it, they assault or harass the
baby next to him. The woman spits and hurries away. Tsotsi woman. Although the novel does not tell us what Tsotsi thinks when
comes to his door to watch what’s going on. Butcher yells an he sees the woman with the baby, it seems to be something different
obscene suggestion after the woman. Tsotsi, seeing the woman from what Butcher is thinking—which illustrates that Tsotsi, unlike
with the baby, has a thought. Butcher, is breaking with the gang’s habits.

Butcher asks Tsotsi whether they should “find one and play.” Since Butcher has just been sexually harassing a woman on the
Tsotsi shakes his head but invites Butcher and Die Aap inside. street, his ominous phrase “find one and play” seems to indicate that
Inside, Butcher asks about the smell. Tsotsi, without replying, he wants the gang to find another woman and sexually assault her.
throws the baby’s old rags into the backyard. Butcher tries to By refusing, Tsotsi breaks further with the gang’s old habits. Now
tell stories like Boston used to, but all his stories are very short. that Tsotsi is breaking with the gang’s habits and with his old
Tsotsi asks Butcher and Die Aap where Boston is. Butcher says “gangster” identity, the members of the gang don’t know how to
he doesn’t know. Trying to maintain conversation, he adds that relate to one another—they can’t even keep up a regular
Boston could be at Soekie’s, and that he and Die Aap left conversation.
Boston in the back alley behind it.

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Tsotsi stops thinking about Boston because he has started When Tsotsi was acting out the stereotypical role of “gangster,” he
thinking about milk, the baby, and his memory of the yellow didn’t feel conscious of making choices—he just did what a
dog. He realizes he can’t control his thoughts. He’s also become “gangster” would naturally do. Now that his relationship to the baby
aware of Butcher and Die Aap as individuals, and he doesn’t and his memories are making him aware of himself as an individual,
know what he’s supposed to tell them to do. Tsotsi has become not a stereotype, he realizes that he is making choices—in fact, he
conscious of making choices, which disturbs him and prevents has been making choices all along. Meanwhile, the yellow dog once
him from choosing. Agitated, Tsotsi walks to the door. Butcher again comes to Tsotsi’s mind while he is thinking about the baby,
asks him what they’re going to do, and Tsotsi blurts that they’re suggesting the dog has something to do with parenthood.
going to the city. Even though that could mean anything,
Butcher and Die Aap follow Tsotsi. On the way out, Butcher
asks Die Aap whether he smelled the odor in Tsotsi’s room.

CHAPTER 6
By “city,” Tsotsi means Terminal Place, a street junction near the People have to take buses between the city and the townships
gasworks where people shop from stores and carts. At because of racist apartheid laws: non-white people are allowed to
Terminal Place, the buses make journeys between the city and work for white people in the city if they have the required pass, but
the townships. Terminal Place becomes active in the morning, they are not allowed to live in “white” areas due to apartheid’s
when workers start taking buses. By dawn, commercial activity segregation laws. So, people have to pay to commute from the non-
starts. Activity dies down by nightfall, because “night is never white townships. The reminder that “night is never safe,” meanwhile,
safe.” Tsotsi arrives at Terminal Place in the evening on a bus. suggests that poverty and oppression under apartheid have
He leaves without Butcher or Die Aap 15 minutes after he increased crime and made the areas near the townships dangerous.
arrives, having found a prospective target.

The target is Morris Tshabalala, who still considers himself a Morris Tshabalala curses Tsotsi by calling him the “whelp of a yellow
man despite losing his legs in an accident and lacking hope. bitch”—literally, Morris is saying that Tsotsi is the puppy of a female
When a foot steps on Morris’s hand, he cries out, “Whelp of a yellow dog. Thus Morris’s curse mysteriously associates the yellow
yellow bitch!”—in other words, puppy of a female yellow dog. dog Tsotsi has begun to remember with Tsotsi’s mother, whom he
He cries out not because of the pain but because he dislikes can’t remember.
being seen. Whereas usually people apologize when they step
on Morris, this man (Tsotsi) doesn’t reply. Morris, disturbed by
Tsotsi’s eyes, grunts and moves away.

Morris doesn’t move away from Tsotsi because he is afraid. South Africa contains a number of gold mines. Before and during
Morris doesn’t consider anything fear that fails to measure up apartheid, Black men did the dangerous work of mining the gold for
to the “terror” of the mining collapse he experienced. The mine little pay while white men reaped the major profits. This economic
was a dark world where time was measured differently and structure led to Morris losing his legs—which shows how racist
men sang about their estrangement from the sun, the moon, structures like apartheid seriously harm people, even when no one
and their wives. When the shaft collapsed, the workers individual is intending the harm. When Morris calls Tsotsi a “tsotsi,”
panicked. Morris Tshabalala’s legs were crushed under a beam. meanwhile, it reminds the reader that Tsotsi has not only embraced
Wondering whether he is getting old, Morris calls Tsotsi a this stereotyped identity in the past—other people also impose it on
“Tsotsi shit” and a “yellow bitch shit.” him.

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Crowds impede Morris’s progress as he drags himself toward In contrast with Tsotsi, Morris has clear memories of his past and
his usual eating house. He is happy when he reaches an empty acts in response to them, which shows how memory shapes present
street and feels the warmth that the “paving stones” have behavior and identity. For example, because of how cold he felt
absorbed from the sun. He thinks how he likes warmth because during his accident, Morris associates cold with “the touch of death,”
his legs were cold during the accident, so “cold is the touch of loves being warm, and seeks out warmth.
death.” He wonders how much longer he will feel warmth. His
hands are laboring too much, carrying him for six years, and
they have trouble catching sensations now.

Morris stops to check his hands and looks behind him. He sees When Morris wonders what he has to live for, it shows how the
a man sitting by a store and, beyond him, the dwindling crowds. profoundly apartheid economic structures that led to his mining
Morris, starting to move again, wonders why he continues accident have harmed him. That he hates money, meanwhile,
living and what he has to live for. He stops to rest. It’s getting suggests he knows that white greed for money led to his
dark. Morris sees the same man sitting by a different store, accident—which in turn shows that Morris, unlike Tsotsi, is
closer by. He notices it’s the man who stepped on his hand consciously aware of how white supremacy and apartheid have
earlier—that is, Tsotsi. Morris, heading back toward the crowds, shaped his life.
thinks that he was correct in hating money because Tsotsi may
kill him for it.

Morris wonders how he could survive without money. He Although the novel does not explicitly state the race of the old
recalls begging an old woman who called him “John my poor woman who refused to employ Morris, she called him “boy”
boy” and “Johnny poor boy” to employ him as her gardener. although he was a grown man, which implies that she was white
Instead, she gave him a penny and shut the door on him. Morris and engaged in condescending interpersonal racism. That people
threw out the penny and kept seeking employment. People kept giving Morris charity when he wanted work suggests a
dropped change to him in the street, and he threw it out, until mismatch between how he identified himself and how other people
one day he was too exhausted. Although he hated the money, identified him: he identified as a worker, but because he was
which he hadn’t earned, he couldn’t throw out the amount he disabled, other people stereotyped him as a beggar and failed to
had been given without drawing notice. treat him with dignity.

After that day, Morris began begging. He learned begging spots This passage illustrates how people internalize and come to identify
and tricks until he could obtain enough money for food, but his with the stereotypes, like “beggar” or “tsotsi,” that other people
pride never recovered. After six years of begging, he’s become impose on them.
bitter. He yells at people to “go to hell,” but they don’t hear him.

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In the present, Morris approaches a newspaper salesman who The salesman’s claim that some unidentified “they” have “shot a
sells to white people. By the salesman’s stand, Morris looks hole in the moon” may be an allusion to the first time a rocket—the
through the crowd for Tsotsi but can’t see him. The salesman USSR’s Luna 2—landed on the moon, in which case the novel is set
tells Morris that “they” have “shot a hole in the moon.” in late 1959. Morris’s claim that the salesman’s white customers
Watching the salesman’s customers, Morris thinks that if he are “walking on stolen legs” makes clear that he knows white
were a real man he would have killed Tsotsi, and that he lost his supremacist economic systems led to his crippling accident. This
legs for these crowds to have gold. “It is for your gold I had to knowledge leads him to feel contempt for stereotypically white
dig. That is what destroyed me. You are walking on stolen legs.” facial features (“thin, unsightly lips”) and the language the white
He looks with contempt at the customers’ “thin, unsightly lips” South Africans speak (probably Afrikaans). That Morris is aware of
and thinks their language “crude.” Some drop change for him. how apartheid has harmed him, while Tsotsi is not, suggests that
When he takes the money, he doesn’t look at it. individual memory is necessary to correctly diagnose social
problems.

Morris catches sight of Tsotsi watching him and curses. He Under apartheid law, Black people were required to carry passes
resolves that despite being crippled, he is man enough to face and could be arrested if they didn’t have one. Given Morris’s
down Tsotsi. Morris starts moving. The salesman calls after him awareness of apartheid’s evils, it is ironic that he’s hoping a white
about a penny he’s left behind, but Morris ignores him. Then policeman enforcing apartheid laws will stop Tsotsi and thereby
the salesman throws the penny at Morris, but Morris doesn’t save Morris from him.
pick it up. Instead, Morris is thinking that the crowds and lights
will protect him from Tsotsi. He hopes a policeman will stop
Tsotsi to demand his pass.

Watching Tsotsi, Morris wonders whether his hands are “soft,” Morris shows his ability to sympathize with Tsotsi, despite the
whether he has a mother, and what his relationship with her threat Tsotsi poses to him, when he wonders about Tsotsi’s hands
was like. But he’s “really asking how do men come to be what and realizes that other people may see him the way he sees Tsotsi.
they become.” He considers that other people might think When Morris wonders about Tsotsi’s mother, and the novel
about him the way he’s thinking about Tsotsi. connects this to the question of “how do men come to be what they
become,” the novel implicitly suggests that a person’s parents are
centrally important to their individual identities—which may explain
why Tsotsi, who cannot remember his parents, has until recently
embraced a stereotyped identity and rejected his individual identity.

Morris reaches a dark side street that leads to a restaurant. In South Africa, the word “kaffir” is an anti-Black racial slur. That
He’s tired and worried Tsotsi will kill him if he goes down the even white people who seem to be sympathizing with Morris
dark street. Morris considers leaving his money somewhere casually call him this slur suggests how deeply ingrained anti-Black
visible. Then a car stalls nearby. Two men get out to push it, racism was in apartheid South African society. Morris’s clever use of
while women stay inside the car and laugh at them. The two the stalled car to elude Tsotsi, meanwhile, shows how much he
men sit on the bumper and smoke a cigarette. One of them wants to live despite the harms that apartheid has inflicted on him.
points out Morris, calling him a “poor kaffir.” Then the two men
start pushing the car again. Morris follows them down the side
street onto another, larger street that’s not as well-lit as the
main street but still busy.

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Morris orders soup and bread at the Bantu Eating House. The “Bantu” is a large, internally diverse group of African peoples who
owner, who usually banters with Morris, is too exhausted today. speak the same family of languages. In South Africa, “Shangaan”
The eating house is poor, the food cheap. On the walls are only refers to a particular Bantu tribe. The restaurant’s name, “Bantu
an advertisement for “lotion for straightening curly hair” and a Eating House,” suggests that it serves African food, while the sign in
sign in Shangaan saying the restaurant won’t take credit. Shangaan suggests that the patrons are Black people who speak an
indigenous African language. The dilapidation of the restaurant and
the advertisement for “lotion for straightening curly hair”—an
advertisement, in other words, for white supremacist beauty
standards—illustrate once again the economic and cultural
oppression of Black South Africans under apartheid.

Morris eats, orders more food, and checks the street for Tsotsi. Morris’s self-reflection about his desire to live contrasts with Tsotsi’s
Although he sees people who look like Tsotsi, he doesn’t see the relative lack of self-reflection—another detail betraying how
man himself. He orders some coffee and, drinking it, admits important memory is to understanding oneself and one’s identity.
internally that he was frightened. He realizes he wants to live.

A voice tells Morris that he didn’t hear him. It’s the newspaper By comparing Tsotsi to a dog, the salesman reminds the reader of
salesman, giving Morris back the penny Morris left behind. The the mysterious connection between the yellow dog and Tsotsi’s
salesman lectures Morris briefly on the value of a penny, telling mother. Meanwhile, by saying that men like Tsotsi “bite their own
him people will commit murder over a penny. Morris takes the people,” the salesman is suggesting that apartheid not only harms
penny and tells the salesman about Tsotsi following him. The Black South Africans by depriving them of economic opportunity,
salesman calls people like Tsotsi “mad dogs” who “bite their but also encourages them to harm each other by making violent
own people,” and Morris says that if he were a real man, he crime one of their only opportunities to earn money. Finally, by
would have killed Tsotsi. The salesman says that then the urging Morris to go home and thank God, the salesman seems to
authorities would have executed Morris. Morris asks what a suggest that religion is not a powerful force in people’s lives but
man is supposed to do. The salesman replies that he should go rather a consolation they indulge in when they are powerless to act.
home, thank God, and deny responsibility. He leaves.

Morris drinks his coffee and checks the street but doesn’t see In this chapter, the novel has been giving the reader Morris’s
Tsotsi. The restaurant owner tells Morris he’s closing. Though perspective on his interactions with Tsotsi while withholding Tsotsi’s
afraid, Morris decides to go home—that is, to the abandoned perspective. When Tsotsi kicks Morris’s money, it’s another break
hut where he squats. On the way, he realizes Tsotsi is following with Tsotsi’s habits—the last time Tsotsi’s gang murdered a man,
him. Morris’s hands are bleeding, and he is holding back tears. Gumboot Dhlamini, they also took his money. Thus the novel is
He raises his money high so Tsotsi can see it and leaves it under foreshadowing a potential change in Tsotsi’s character while
a streetlamp. Pausing at the next streetlamp, Morris sees Tsotsi withholding from the reader exactly what it is.
kick the money.

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Tsotsi continues pursuing Morris, who throws stones at him. Morris believes that he has entered “the place for which the young
Although Morris throws hard, he doesn’t hit Tsotsi. Tsotsi one had waited so patiently the whole night”—in other words, that
vanishes from Morris’s sight, and Morris begins swearing. He Tsotsi is going to act according to his stereotyped “gangster” identity
enters the darkness and anticipates this is “the moment and the and kill Morris now that they’re alone in a dark place. Yet the reader
place for which the young one had waited so patiently the knows that Tsotsi has already broken with his old “gangster” habits
whole night.” by rejecting Morris’s money. The chapter ends on a cliffhanger, in
which the reader does not know whether Tsotsi will act according to
his stereotyped “gangster” identity and kill Morris or break with his
old habits and make a different choice.

CHAPTER 7
Later, Tsotsi will realize that he should have killed Morris Chapter 7 goes back in time to retell the events of Chapter 6 while
before Morris reached the main street. By not killing him then, giving the reader access to Tsotsi’s perspective. By connecting
Tsotsi will experience unexpected consequences, as he did Tsotsi’s interactions with Morris to his experience under the
under the bluegum trees. When Tsotsi steps on Morris’s bluegum trees—where Tsotsi accepted the abandoned baby—the
hand—not on purpose—he’s been thinking about his memory of novel hints that in his interactions with Morris, Tsotsi will somehow
the yellow dog. Morris calling him “whelp of a yellow bitch” at break with his old habits and his stereotyped “gangster” identity, just
that moment startles and terrifies Tsotsi. Tsotsi, filled with as he did when he began caring for the baby. Yet initially, Tsotsi’s
“burning hate” for Morris, decides to kill him, as is “natural in reaction to Morris is in keeping with his stereotyped
the pattern of his life.” identity—feeling threatened by Morris’s mention of the mysterious
yellow dog, he reacts with kneejerk “hate,” and decides to kill Morris
because it fits “the pattern of his life,” or in other words, his
“gangster” habits.

In economic terms, Morris is not a good target for Tsotsi, Just as Tsotsi became invested in the baby when the baby helped
because beggars don’t make much money. Nevertheless, Tsotsi him regain a memory, so he becomes strangely invested in Morris
follows Morris, engrossed by his disability. Eventually he when Morris’s disability helps him understand that memory
realizes Morris carries himself like the yellow dog of Tsotsi’s better—something had harmed the yellow dog’s legs. Tsotsi’s feeling
memory, which leads Tsotsi to realize that the yellow dog’s back that Morris’s disability and oppression represent “the final reality to
legs were “useless.” Tsotsi becomes fascinated by Morris and so life,” meanwhile, may hint that Tsotsi is becoming more aware of
misses opportunities to kill him. Without knowing where his how apartheid (the ultimate cause of Morris’s accident) has shaped
certainty comes from, Tsotsi is certain that Morris’s disability not only Morris’s existence but his own and those of everyone
and ostracism from society represent “the final reality to life.” around him.

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Tsotsi has felt this certainty before, though less forcefully. It Tsotsi does not make explicit what links all the different “ugly” things
reminds him of the time Petah, while being escorted by a and incidents he remembers here. While the incident with Petah
policeman, called out to Tsotsi while he was playing dice and involved the arrest (and probable beating) of a young Black man by
referred to Tsotsi as David. That incident made Tsotsi realize white police, the murder of Gumboot Dhlamini involved an
the “world [is] an ugly place,” an ugliness manifested in exploited Black mine worker murdered by another socially
Butcher’s hands, Gumboot Dhlamini’s corpse, and the marginalized Black man (Butcher), and the “stunted” trees in the
“stunted” trees in the township cemetery. Although this township cemetery represent the half-hearted, failed attempts of
certainty has recurred in Tsotsi’s mind several times, he feels the white-run government to care about the living conditions of
that it’s intensified and embodied in Morris. Black South Africans. The novel thus implies that Tsotsi is realizing
more fully the ugliness of white supremacy and Black oppression
under apartheid.

Tsotsi only identifies that he’s made a mistake in letting Morris Up to this point, Tsotsi’s habitual, knee-jerk feeling toward other
reach the main street when he observes Morris stop at the people has been hatred. That he is beginning to feel something other
newspaper stand. Morris looks back, seems relieved when he than hatred toward Morris shows that he is breaking with his old
can’t find Tsotsi, and gets scared when he eventually sees Tsotsi habits.
again. Tsotsi begins to have a feeling for Morris that is neither
hatred nor disgust. Tsotsi recognizes the feeling but cannot
identify it. Although aware he is undergoing some strange
experience, Tsotsi isn’t sure what it is.

When Morris stops before the dimly lit side street, Tsotsi This passage includes a major turning point for Tsotsi’s character.
thinks he has the looks and mannerisms of a dog. Tsotsi keeps Earlier in the novel, when Boston asked whether Tsotsi ever
insisting to himself that he doesn’t know or care about Morris sympathized with the gang’s victims, Tsotsi seemed to deny it—but
in order to hold off the feeling he can’t identify, which makes Boston predicted that one day, Tsotsi would have such feelings and
him wish Morris wouldn’t move into the side street. When wouldn’t know what to do with them. Now Boston’s prediction
Morris escapes behind the stalled car the two men are pushing, about Tsotsi is coming true.
Tsotsi feels “relief.” He realizes that for the first time, he is
sympathizing with a person he intends to kill.

Tsotsi spies on Morris as he goes into the Bantu Eating House. Tsotsi thinks of sympathy not only as a feeling, but also as a kind of
He buys food from an Indian shop across the street and waits, knowledge that allows him to understand what other people feel
considering his sympathy for Morris. He concludes that the and to see them more clearly. His sense of “revelation” and “infinity”
issue is really Morris’s feeling, not his own—Tsotsi is “realizing in his sympathy nebulously connects sympathy to God, since the
something of what the other man felt.” He links his sympathy word “revelation” has religious connotations—it can refer to
with Morris to Boston being sick after they killed Gumboot. knowledge that God bestows directly on human beings—and since
Though Tsotsi doesn’t fully understand sympathy, he compares “infinity,” or limitlessness, is associated with God in the major
it to a sudden illumination that allows him to see Morris. The monotheistic religions.
light of sympathy also allows Tsotsi to see the baby, Boston,
and Gumboot. Beyond them, Tsotsi senses “an infinity” and “a
brighter, intense revelation.”

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Tsotsi drops the food he has bought and goes searching for his Previously, when looking at the baby, Tsotsi associated the baby
reflection, thinking his appearance must have changed after his with generic “man”—that is, with the group identity “human.” After
internal experiences. He sees his reflection in a store window, beginning to sympathize with Morris, he looks at himself in a store
but it vanishes when he gets close. When he moves further window and also sees a generic “shape of a man.” This passage hints
away, what appears is “the shape of a man,” which could be that Tsotsi is coming to embrace a true group identity—human—as
Tsotsi, Boston, Butcher, or Morris with legs. Tsotsi finds this he begins to reject his old, stereotyped identity of “gangster.” It also
thought oddly reassuring. hints that sympathizing with others is helping Tsotsi to rediscover
his humanity.

Tsotsi sees the Bantu Eating House’s lights go out and runs Clearly, Tsotsi is confused and conflicted: although he is becoming
around looking for Morris. He laughs when he catches sight of more aware of his own capacity for choice, he still feels that he has
Morris and thinks he has no choice but to continue stalking no choice but to act out his “gangster” habits or patterns of behavior
Morris, despite his “new-found sympathy.” Tsotsi, finding it and murder Morris. Yet, at the same time, his sympathy for Morris
painful that Morris doesn’t know Tsotsi is still stalking him, prompts him to try to alert his victim with unnecessary noise.
starts coughing, whistling, and coming nearer.

After Morris sees Tsotsi, events move faster. When Morris puts To “belittle” something is to trivialize it or downplay its value.
the money down, Tsotsi feels that it is a “belittlement” of what Ironically, although Tsotsi still plans to murder Morris, his sympathy
has occurred between them—hardly a price that could “buy with Morris makes him feel that Morris’s life is worth much more
life”—and so he kicks it. Then Morris starts throwing stones at than money—so much more that Morris’s attempt to “buy” his
Tsotsi. Tsotsi longs to call out, “I understand.” Instead, while safety with money actually trivializes or downplays his life’s value.
Morris throws stones, yells curses, and cries, Tsotsi moves Once again, Tsotsi associates sympathy with understanding: he
ahead of him and waits for him in the darkness. believes he has come to understand Morris as a result of
sympathizing with him.

When Morris meets Tsotsi in the dark, they wait with a feeling Tsotsi breaks dramatically with his previous habits and his
of intense “intimacy.” When Tsotsi asks Morris what he’s feeling, stereotyped “gangster” identity by displaying curiosity about his
Morris says he feels nothing. Tsotsi asks what he used to feel, victim Morris’s life rather than simply killing Morris. Meanwhile,
and Morris admits that death scared him. Tsotsi asks whether Morris’s statement—“You have heard a big man cry. It is
he’s scared anymore. Morris says he has learned from his hands enough”—implies that his crying violates gender stereotypes
not to be, explaining that before his accident, his hands used to because it is not something a “big man” should do. Just as Tsotsi is
feel life in sexual encounters with women. After his accident, he reevaluating his stereotyped “gangster” identity, so Morris suggests
used his hands like feet, and they stopped feeling. Then, after that his emotional behavior doesn’t fit a stereotyped masculine
feeling so much fear while Tsotsi was stalking him, his heart identity.
stopped feeling. He concludes: “You have heard a big man cry. It
is enough.”

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Tsotsi says the crying “was the worst” of their encounter. In this passage, Tsotsi repeatedly tells Morris that he sympathizes
Morris asks what else Tsotsi noticed, and Tsotsi tells him he with him—the repetition implies that Tsotsi’s own sympathy shocks
“grunt[s]” and “look[s]” like a dog. He admits he sympathizes him and suggests that, perhaps, he wants Morris to explain to him
with Morris and asks him how he urinates and defecates and how sympathy arose between them. Although Tsotsi’s comparison
whether he has women. Morris explains how he urinates and of Morris to a dog may seem insulting, the importance of the yellow
defecates and says he never has women anymore because they dog to Tsotsi’s psychology suggests Tsotsi doesn’t mean the
laugh at him. Tsotsi asks Morris what he knows and admits, comparison (or the personal questions he asks) as an insult. Finally,
again, to sympathy. Morris says he would have killed Tsotsi with Tsotsi’s off-hand mention of his knife—which represents his
sticks if he weren’t crippled. Tsotsi mentions that he uses a stereotyped “gangster” identity—suggests that while he is
knife, not sticks, as his weapon of choice. outgrowing the gangster stereotype, he still unreflectively identifies
with it.

Morris asks what he ever did to Tsotsi and why Tsotsi is Morris rejects Tsotsi’s too-quick claim to understand him by
pursuing him after he surrendered his money. Tsotsi says he insisting on his life’s unique aspects, including his disabled body. In
didn’t want the money and states a third time that he this passage, then, Morris’s “hard hands,” “ugly face,” and “no legs”
sympathized with Morris. Morris asks why Tsotsi is targeting represent what is particular to him as an individual—what Tsotsi
him, and Tsotsi tells Morris that he’s ugly and asks whether needs to know if he is really going to understand and sympathize
that’s “all.” Morris thinks for a while and says he wants to live. with Morris. Thus, this passage suggests that to genuinely
When Tsotsi claims he knows that, Morris tells him that he sympathize with someone, you can’t just have vague good feelings
doesn’t know—that Morris, after many years of despair, is toward them—you have to engage imaginatively with the
speaking about his desire to live to his own “hard hands,” “ugly particulars of their experience and their unique individual identity.
face,” and “no legs.” Tsotsi, moved by Morris’s emotion, asks him
to explain. Morris says he wants to sense warmth from the
pavement, rain, wind, trees, colors, and birdsong. He asks
whether Tsotsi understands, and Tsotsi says yes.

Morris asks why Tsotsi needs to kill him. After a pause, Tsotsi By deciding not to kill Morris, Tsotsi once again breaks with his old
says he doesn’t need to. He repeats it and declares he’ll let habits and stereotyped “gangster” identity. In so doing, he
Morris live. Morris asks Tsotsi’s age. Tsotsi says he doesn’t recognizes his own capacity for choice. After this decision, he tells
know but plans to figure it out. Morris, looking at Tsotsi, can Morris he plans to find out his own age—which shows how, in
only see “the shape of a man” and can’t remember what Tsotsi rejecting his stereotyped identity, he is becoming more interested in
looked like under the streetlights due to his own fear. Wanting his true, individual identity. When Morris looks at Tsotsi and sees
to give Tsotsi a gift, Morris decides to tell him something “the shape of a man,” it recalls the earlier scene where Tsotsi looked
special: he says that mothers love their children and sing them at his own reflection in a window and could see only a generic
songs. Tsotsi denies that mothers do this and walks away. human shape—suggesting that Tsotsi, in sparing Morris’s life, is
Glancing back, he sees Morris gathering the money Tsotsi embracing the group identity of “human”—or, in other words,
kicked. recovering his humanity. The strange exchange between Tsotsi and
Morris about mothers, in which Tsotsi denies that mothers love
their children, may foreshadow some later revelation about Tsotsi’s
own mother, whom he cannot remember.

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Tsotsi walks to the township. He keeps trying to stop and think, The very layout of the segregated city—the “labyrinth” of the
but his thoughts move so fast—from Boston cutting himself, to “extensive factory area”—makes it difficult for Tsotsi to think. This
the baby, the yellow dog, Morris urinating, and so on—that he detail suggests that apartheid, the man-made social system
can’t make sense of them. Only when he passes out of “an represented physically in the segregated city, inhibits people’s ability
extensive factory area” between the city and the township that to think clearly about their lives. It is only when Tsotsi focuses on the
looks like a “labyrinth” is he able to think. He sees the moon, natural world, represented by the moon, that he can order his
thinks it looks the same as last night, and recalls that he thoughts. When he questions whether he will go back to gang life, he
received the baby under the bluegum trees only the night is essentially asking himself whether his habits will overpower his
before. He tries to order in his mind the events between his newly discovered capacity for choice.
receiving the baby and sparing Morris’s life. He wonders
whether the past day is an anomaly and whether he will go back
to gang life with Butcher, Die Aap, and even Boston.

Tsotsi concludes the day is not an anomaly but a new This passage marks another major turning point for Tsotsi. Here, he
beginning—though of what, he isn’t sure. He will continue to explicitly asserts his power to reject his old, violent habits. He is also
care for the baby and try to uncover his memories, starting deciding to pursue an identity distinct from his former stereotyped
with the yellow dog. Perhaps most importantly, he has realized “gangster” identity—an identity as a parental stand-in for the baby
that he has the choice to break with the old patterns of his life. and as someone with a unique past, here represented by his
Specifically, he has the choice whether or not to kill. He memory of the yellow dog.
wonders, forcefully, when he first made the choice to kill. Then,
he crumples to the ground and sleeps.

CHAPTER 8
On Sunday, the Church of Christ the Redeemer rings its bell. In this passage, religion brings people together, in that everyone in
People throughout the township hear it—including Boston, the township hears the church bells at the same time. Yet the white
lying somewhere unknown staring at his own arm without Reverend—whom the reader would expect to feel positively about
recognizing it. Meanwhile, the Reverend Ransome glances out religion—casts doubt on the ability of religion to unite people across
his window at congregants filing into the church. He becomes racial groups when he remembers that he even didn’t know the poor
suddenly, helplessly enraged, thinking, “Go home. It’s no good. I Black worker Gumboot Dhlamini’s name, despite presiding over his
didn’t know his name.” Yet he hurriedly leaves for church and funeral. Thus, the passage implies both that religion can unify
prays to God for aid. people and that it still isn’t powerful enough to overcome South
African segregation and racism.

Tsotsi walks into the ruins and sees an “uncertain line” on the Tsotsi doesn’t really know how to care for a baby, despite his
wall, the shoebox, and the corner. It reminds him of a day when decision to take on a parental role: he got the wrong food for the
he was playing with Boston’s pencil in his room, drawing on the baby, which attracted ants, which in turn harmed the baby. That
table, until he glanced at Boston, got angry at his expression, Tsotsi continues to care for the baby despite his first impulse to flee
and broke the pencil. He says aloud, “Jesus. Ants”—the from his mistakes shows that he is continuing to exercise his free
condensed milk has attracted ants to the room. When Tsotsi choice to take on a new role and identity, even when it is difficult.
opens the shoebox, he finds ants around the baby’s mouth.
Though his first impulse is to get rid of the baby, Tsotsi cleans
the baby’s face and puts the shoebox in a shaded corner
without ants. He kills the ants on the wall and in the corner.

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Tsotsi realizes the baby needs food and clean clothes. He Tsotsi associates the baby with Morris because he feels sympathy
examines the baby, feels sympathy, and remembers Morris. He for both. This association suggests that the more people you
considers buying more condensed milk but rejects the idea. sympathize with, the easier it becomes to recognize and sympathize
Killing more ants, he remembers Butcher harassing the woman with the common humanity in everyone.
with a baby. Tsotsi concocts a plan. He takes the baby from the
box, bundles it in his coat, and leaves.

Tsotsi’s room is down the street from a “communal tap” called That people in the township must wait in long lines for a necessity
Waterworks Square. Day and night, people come there to like water shows the poverty in which non-white people lived under
collect water. Because the line is long, people talk while waiting, apartheid. In mentioning that the water baptizes infants who will
and the tap is “rooted in their lives.” The church even uses its soon enough be waiting in the line, the novel suggests both religion’s
water to baptize infants who will soon have to wait in line for social importance in the township and its inability to improve the
water themselves. On Sunday, an 18-year-old mother named material conditions of the township. Miriam and her son Simon,
Miriam Ngidi is waiting in the line while carrying her baby. She meanwhile, are noteworthy in that they are the first positive
looks at her baby Simon, he waves to her, and she feels mother-child relationship represented in the novel—in contrast with
intensely proud of him. Tsotsi, who cannot remember his mother, and with the woman who
abandoned her baby to Tsotsi’s care.

Miriam moves forward in line, feels her baby falling asleep on In apartheid South Africa, bus boycotts were one way that Black
her back, and wonders where her husband, also named Simon, workers protested their legal and economic oppression. As Miriam’s
has gone. She wonders how a man in love, who’s gotten a husband vanished during a bus boycott, the novel may be implying
woman pregnant, can just vanish on his way to work. When he that he was imprisoned or killed for his political activities.
vanished, Miriam was eight months pregnant. She walked
Simon’s six-mile route to his factory job looking for him. The
workers were all walking to their jobs at this time due to a bus
boycott.

A voice tells Miriam that if she falls asleep, the others will cut The elderly man’s claim that many people vanished on their way to
her in line. Miriam moves forward with the line, looks back work strengthens the implication that Black workers walking to
toward the voice, and sees an elderly man. He asks Miriam their jobs during the bus boycott suffered racist violence in
about herself. After hesitating about whether to ask him the retaliation. Miriam’s hopelessness upon seeing the look in the man’s
questions she asks all strangers, she tells him that her husband eyes, meanwhile, shows her fear that apartheid’s white supremacist
vanished on his way to work. The elderly man says that culture has permanently taken her husband away from her and
happened to many people. Miriam asks whether the man has their son.
seen Simon and tells him Simon’s name, address, and
description, but she stops talking when she sees the look in the
man’s eyes.

Miriam fills the elderly man’s tin, fills her own, and walks back to That many of the boycotting workers spent time in jail reveals that it
her room. There, she reflects that the elderly man told the was primarily the white police who retaliated against them. This
truth—a lot of people did vanish on their way to work during fact suggests that the police may have harmed Miriam’s husband as
the boycott. Yet most of them returned after time in jail, well and tightens the connection between the apartheid
whereas Simon didn’t. Miriam asks aloud the question she only government and the destruction of Miriam’s family.
asks in this room she used to share with Simon: “Are you dead?”

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Miriam finds it easier to believe that Simon is alive when she’s Due to the trauma that apartheid has caused her and her family,
out in the world, where she might run into him. At home, she Miriam has gotten stuck in a “pattern” or set of habits and begun
thinks it’s likely he’s dead. Despite her grief, she has “carried on” avoiding positive, sympathetic connections with other
with the new “pattern of her life” by getting jobs washing people—somewhat like Tsotsi at the beginning of the novel.
clothes and cleaning for white people. Yet she doesn’t socialize,
trade favors, or share herself with others.

Someone knocks on Miriam’s door. She hopes it’s Simon, Earlier in the novel, characters such as Cassim and Morris have
though he wouldn’t knock on his own door. When she opens it, looked at Tsotsi and immediately identified him as a stereotype, a
she sees “just another young man” and asks him what he wants. “gangster.” By contrast, Miriam looks at him and sees “just another
The man (Tsotsi) checks behind him that no one else is around. young man.” This contrast illustrates Miriam’s disconnection from
Before Miriam can close the door, he covers her mouth, barrels the social world, yet it may also foreshadow Miriam seeing Tsotsi
into the room, and tells her he’ll kill the baby if she tries to more clearly as an individual than other characters have been able
escape or makes noise. He lets her go, examines the baby, and to do. Nevertheless, this passage does show Tsotsi falling back on his
tells her to come with him. When she won’t move, he again old, violent habits. Rather than asking for Miriam’s help, he coerces
threatens to kill her baby and tells her what he wants “won’t her, threatening her child and accidentally making her believe he
take long.” She flinches. He says, “It’s not that.” When she asks plans to rape her.
whether she can get someone to take care of the baby, he
insists it won’t take long.

Tsotsi walks to his room with Miriam following. He makes her Although Miriam is mother to a young child herself, she at first feels
enter ahead of him. He pulls her to the bed, where she sees a no sympathy for the neglected baby that Tsotsi wants her to help.
baby. He demands she feed the baby. When she doesn’t react, Miriam’s lack of generosity here suggests that under conditions of
he rips open her shirt and repeats his demand. Miriam hides threat and stress, people are less likely to react sympathetically to
her breasts and retreats, disgusted by the strange baby with others. Similarly, Tsotsi regresses because he is worried about the
the bad smell. The situation has elicited her ungenerous, baby: he falls back on his old, violent habits and brandishes the knife
antisocial instincts. She tells Tsotsi the baby is too filthy to feed, that represents his stereotyped “gangster” identity.
so Tsotsi demands she clean and then feed the baby. He takes
out his knife and, again, threatens to kill Miriam’s baby if she
doesn’t do what he says.

Miriam cleans the baby and dresses him in Tsotsi’s rags. Once This strange and arguably sexist passage seems to imply that
cleaned, the baby no longer disgusts her. She shuts her eyes women so instinctively identify as mothers that they find
and feeds him, which triggers “a sudden wave of erotic feeling breastfeeding “erotic,” which in turn makes women in caretaking
in her.” She would not have resisted much if Tsotsi had raped roles vulnerable to men’s sexual advances.
her then. When the baby finishes feeding, Miriam is exhausted.
She puts him on the bed, feels the wounds around his mouth,
and glances at Tsotsi. Tsotsi twice tells her that ants did it, but
she doesn’t seem to grasp his meaning.

Miriam fixes her clothes, walks to the door, and asks where the Just as Morris frightened Tsotsi by calling him “whelp of a yellow
baby’s mother is. Tsotsi shrugs. Miriam says: “a bitch in a bitch”—in other words, puppy of a yellow female dog—so Miriam
backyard would look after its puppies better.” Tsotsi, for some frightens Tsotsi by talking about female dogs and puppies. Tsotsi’s
reason scared, tells her no. Miriam, mishearing it as “go,” leaves. strange fear underlines the importance of the yellow dog to his
psychology and heightens the mystery surrounding it.

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Sunday night arrives. People gather and speak “dispiritedly” This passage contrasts people’s habitual actions—the things they do
about their exhaustion and work the next day. Eventually, they every Sunday—with Tsotsi’s sudden, singular revelation of a new
go to bed. Tsotsi stays awake. He’s carried the baby when it memory. This contrast suggests that the memory will be very
cried, put it in his bed, and sat. He’s trying not to dislodge a important for Tsotsi’s development.
memory that has come to him, which he replays over and over.

CHAPTER 9
In a flashback, a child (David) listens to his mother hum with This family scene, with its “security” and comfort, contrasts with the
“warm security.” An elderly woman says his mother seems impoverished, dangerous situations that Black characters living
happy. His mother agrees and sings more loudly. David is on the under apartheid have suffered throughout the novel. Because this
floor in a little room listening to his mother and watching a fly chapter comes directly after Tsotsi has gained a new memory, the
hit the window. He recognizes everything in his world and feels reader may suspect that this chapter contains Tsotsi’s childhood
“comforted.” memories. The singing mother reminds the reader of Morris’s claim
that mothers sing to their children. Since Tsotsi denied that mothers
sing to their children, this connection may foreshadow that
something will happen to stop David from hearing his mother’s
singing.

The elderly woman asks, “What time tomorrow, my child?” The The novel has not yet made clear who “he” is. Yet given the
mother says, “He says to be here all day.” The elderly woman frequency with which family separations occur in the novel—a
suggests that this is typical male behavior. The mother asks mother abandoning her child to Tsotsi, Tsotsi forgetting his parents,
whether, after years, one more day of waiting matters. Miriam losing her husband while pregnant with his child—the
reader may suspect that “he” is a lost family member who is finally
returning.

The mother asks David to bring the salt. While he’s fetching it, It seems that the mother and the elderly woman have ceased
he hears the elderly woman ask whether he knows. His mother talking about the unidentified “he” and have started talking about
says yes, and the elderly woman asks what he says about it. His the child David, since the mother mentions that “he” is too young to
mother says that he’s too young to remember. David runs to his remember. Although the passage leaves unstated what David
mother with the salt, and she hugs him. Looking at the old doesn’t remember, the reader may guess that David can’t remember
woman, he thinks about his fear and respect for her: fear, since the lost “he” who has been absent for years. David’s thoughts about
she pinched him hard when he misbehaved, and respect, the elderly woman suggest that she has taken on a quasi-parental
because adults respect her and because she really sees him and role with respect to him: she punishes him when he misbehaves, but
doesn’t laugh at him. she also sees him, understands him, and takes him seriously—in
other words, sympathizes with him.

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The elderly woman asks whether David looks like him. David’s The elderly woman’s question about whether David looks like the
mother says yes. The elderly woman calls David, but David unidentified “him” implies that “he” is an older male relative—most
hesitates until his mother tells him to go. The elderly woman likely David’s father, since the novel has made no mention of a
asks his age. After his mother encourages him, he tells the old father being present in the house. The mother’s comment that
woman he’s 10. The old woman says 10 is very young—David David will soon be “born to the troubles of this world,” meanwhile,
hasn’t yet “been born to the troubles of this world.” David’s ominously suggests that apartheid South Africa threatens Black
mother says he will be. They lapse into silence. children’s wellbeing and innocence and foreshadows trouble for
David.

David goes into the yard and stops a “safe distance” from the The yellow dog’s appearance may strengthen the reader’s suspicion
yellow dog. David and the dog once played together, but now that this chapter represents Tsotsi’s childhood memories. The
she snarls if he comes near to where she’s tied up. David edges mother’s comment that David will have “other playmates soon
close to her and prepares to edge closer before running away. enough” implies that the yellow dog is pregnant with puppies—a fact
His mother comes out and tells him to stop it. When he that partially explains why Tsotsi associates the yellow dog with
complains that the dog won’t play with him anymore, his babies and mothers but does not reveal why the memory has so
mother says he’ll have “other playmates soon enough.” much traumatic weight for him.

The mother sends David to fetch a mat. He gets it out. She This passage reveals that the elderly woman is not related to David
gives him food to bring to the elderly lady, who pretends not to and his mother and makes explicit that the man David’s mother is
notice she’s taking it, because she lacks a family and would expecting is David’s father. In tandem, these two facts suggests that
starve without David’s mother. David, his mother, and the the elderly woman has taken on a quasi-parental role toward David,
elderly woman eat dinner. At the meal’s end, David’s mother not because of any biological obligation, but because his father—for
tells him his father will arrive the next day. For a long time, reasons not yet explained—has been absent.
David’s mother has been saying his father would come back,
and now the time has come.

Because David’s mother told David his father is warm, Although David’s home seems secure and comforting in contrast
laughing, and soft, David imagines his father “glowing,” laughing with most other settings in the novel, this passage reveals the
constantly, and covered in feathers. He imagines his father sadness of David’s family situation: he was deprived of his father for
flying home. After dinner, David and his mother go to bed. In unknown reasons when he was too young to know his father or fully
bed, David’s mother talks more about David’s father and the understand what was happening. The storm attacking David’s
past. David falls into a dream about himself and his mother reunited family in his dream foreshadows trouble for them.
riding on his flying, feathered father’s back. Out of nowhere, a
storm comes and begins driving them out of the air.

David wakes. He hears stones on lamp-posts—a signal that the That the people in David’s neighborhood have a signal to alert their
police are about to raid the neighborhood. Policemen break neighbors of a police raid implies raids are both common and
down the door to David’s house and come with flashlights into threatening—hinting at how the apartheid government uses the
the room where he and his mother are sleeping. He begins to police to regulate and oppress Black people and how Black people
cry out, but his mother grabs him and tells him not to, so he resist this oppression.
stops.

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From the street David hears voices, police vans, people being By noting that the police look to David like “enormous khaki-coated
moved, and people hiding. The police look to him like shadows,” the novel emphasizes how young David is and how
“enormous khaki-coated shadows.” He hears one say, “Pas frightening this situation is for him. One policeman, demanding
kaffir.” His mother tries to say something. They grab her out of David’s mother’s pass, calls her a “kaffir”—an anti-Black racial
bed and take her away without letting her put other clothes on. slur—which suggests that the policeman is personally racist as well
She yells back at David not to cry. Then he sees the police shove as an enforcer of racist laws (apartheid law required Black people to
her into one of their vans and shut the door. carry passes and regulated where they could live or travel). Here, the
reader sees how apartheid law can destroy Black families by
separating parents from children—just as apartheid South Africa’s
economically oppressive white supremacist society seems to have
separated Gumboot Dhlamini from his pregnant wife, motivated
the young mother to abandon her baby to Tsotsi, and taken
Miriam’s husband from her and their son.

Once the police have crammed the vans with people, they The people the police have arrested are calling out instructions to
leave. The people in the vans call out instructions about money, those left behind, which suggests that such arrests are common and
courts, police, and what to bring them, but it’s difficult to hear that people believe they know what to do in response. Yet the novel
full sentences. The vans leave, and eventually the makes clear that those left behind can’t hear the arrested people
neighborhood sinks into quiet. The people in the neighborhood well, implying that their instructions may be fruitless. The sense of
feel the destructiveness of the police raid less in the physical powerlessness that haunts the neighborhood after the police leave
damage than in the emotional injury it leaves behind. After they underscores the lack of legal rights Black people had under
have cleaned up a bit, they go to bed because they have no apartheid: those left behind do not believe the law will treat their
other options. loved ones fairly.

David stays in bed without moving. His mother has promised This passage reveals that David’s mother has explained to him what
him many times that if someone takes her away, he should wait to do if she is arrested, which shows that their Black neighborhood
in their room, and she will come back. He listens for noise is constantly under threat from white police enforcing racist
indicating she’s coming. He hears the yellow dog outside but apartheid laws. Since David hears the yellow dog after his mother’s
not his mother. He begins to call out for her. arrest, the reader may begin to understand why Tsotsi associates
the dog with children separated from their mothers.

The elderly woman calls back to ask what’s the matter, comes The elderly woman guesses right away that the police have taken
into the room, and examines it. She asks where David’s mother David’s mother, which underlines once again how regularly the
is. When he doesn’t reply, she asks whether it was the police. police raid David’s neighborhood. Here, she steps into a quasi-
He wails for his mother and makes for the door. The elderly parental role, caring for David in his mother’s absence.
woman catches him, waits for him to finish struggling and
yelling, and puts him back in bed. He cries until he falls asleep.

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David wakes up in the morning and, for a moment, doesn’t The elderly woman’s strange rhetorical question in response to
remember the police have taken his mother. When the elderly David asking about his mother shows, once again, religion’s
woman offers him coffee, the memory comes back. He powerlessness to protect Black South Africans against white
demands to know where his mother is. The elderly woman supremacist oppression: the elderly woman seems to be implying
replies, “Where is God in Heaven?” When David begins to cry, that God is absent from their lives, just as David’s mother is now
the elderly woman asks what kind of man he’ll be when he absent.
grows up. David stops crying, drinks some coffee, and
reassures himself that his mother will come back.

The elderly woman dresses and tells David she’s going to The elderly woman is trying to help David’s family by finding his
search for his mother. David says his mother promised to mother, but she’s also leaving a young child alone. That she has to
return. The elderly woman says she’ll take David’s mother her choose between finding David’s mother and supervising David
dress and help her come back. David asks to accompany the shows the impossible situations in which apartheid puts Black
elderly woman, but she tells him to wait for his father to arrive. adults trying to fulfill parental roles.

When the elderly woman leaves, David is terrified of meeting From context, the reader can assume that “Tondi” is David’s
his father without his mother. He waits in bed and falls asleep mother’s name and that the person searching for her is David’s
around noon. Someone wakes him up by knocking on the door father, now returned. Yet without a supervising adult, David has no
and calling, “Tondi.” David flees into the back yard and hides in a one to introduce him to his father, whom he’s never met. He’s
chicken coop. He hears footsteps and a voice continuing to call naturally afraid of an unknown intruder in his house.
for “Tondi.” Another voice calls out that Tondi is gone—the
police took her.

The voice keeps crying Tondi’s name. David hears “wild The “wild breaking noise” from the house implies that David’s father
breaking noise” from the house. Footsteps travel into the yard. is so upset by his wife’s arrest—the day before their family was
The yellow dog snarls, and then David hears her yell in pain. supposed to reunite—that he destroys something. The yellow dog
The footsteps move away, the voice cries, “Tondi! I’m come snarling and then yelling in pain, meanwhile, implies that she warns
back,” and then David can only hear the dog’s pained noises. off or attempts to attack David’s father, who responds by hurting
her.

David looks at the yellow dog. Someone has kicked her and In his anger at Tondi’s arrest, David’s father has fatally harmed the
broken her back legs. She crawls toward the coop with her yellow dog. That the yellow dog and her puppies die the day after
front legs until she hits the end of her chain. She lies down, David’s mother is arrested (and as an indirect result of her arrest)
births dead puppies, and dies. All day David watches flies suggests that the yellow dog represents how apartheid destroys
collect around the bodies. Then he runs away from the coop. families and separates parents from children. It is now clear why a
baby abandoned by his mother triggered the memory of the yellow
dog in Tsotsi—it reminded him of his own childhood separation from
his mother.

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At night, David is cold, hungry, and unsure what day it is when a The existence of these homeless, parentless children implies that
group of children approach him. They ask who he is, where he poverty and oppression under apartheid have destroyed many more
came from, and whether he has a mother or father. When he families than just David’s.
doesn’t answer, they decide David is one of them and invite him
to join them. They take him to the river, where they sleep in
pipes, and offer him water, bread, and orange peels.

The group’s youngest boy, Simon, won’t eat. The others Simon’s swollen belly is a symptom of malnutrition. This fact,
examine his swollen belly and say he’s “going like Willie.” When together with the children’s discussion of Willie—who seems to have
David asks who Willie is, someone replies that they “put him died and been “put away,” that is, buried or dumped, by the other
away.” The group decides to give David—whose name they children—reveals that these parentless children never have enough
haven’t learned—Willie’s name. They decide the day was a to eat and sometimes starve. This fact highlights how dysfunctional
failure because they got so little food and agree to “try and oppressive apartheid South Africa is.
somewhere else” the next day. David asks what they mean, but
they don’t seem to understand the question.

A boy called Petah says he’ll show David where to sleep, tells The reader will remember that Tsotsi encounters Petah after he has
him they’ll get him a better name than the “dead” Willie, says lost his memory and that Petah calls him “David.” Petah’s
they’ll be friends, and demands David say something. Then he appearance here is more evidence that David is Tsotsi as a child. At
leads David into a pipe, where Petah falls asleep. David realizes this point, David can only confusedly remember his mother’s singing
the pipes are warm and tries to remember where else was and that he was supposed to wait for her, which reveals that the
warm. He remembers singing and a voice telling him not to trauma of her disappearance has already caused him to start losing
move. Realizing there’s somewhere he ought to be, he climbs his memory.
out of the pipe.

Petah wakes up and asks where David’s going. David is trying Already, David has lost coherent memories of his past: his reason for
to climb the steep riverbank when Petah catches him and tells leaving the other children comes to him but is soon “gone.” When
him to stop. The other children emerge from their pipes and the other children get David on the ground and hold him there
hold David on the ground. Someone asks David what he was because he’s trying to leave, the novel may be hinting that David
doing, and he shakes his head because his reason is “gone.” has entered a new, more violent way of life.
When Petah suggests the problem was “home,” the other
children disperse.

Petah says David shouldn’t go home at night. One child in the Petah’s story about Joji, murdered trying to find his family, shows
group, Sam, reunited with his mother during the day—but how dangerous the parentless children’s lives are. In losing his
another, Joji, went back to his old home at night and was killed mother and his memories, David is also losing his identity: he
by the new inhabitants. Petah suggests that David, whom he declares his old self “dead.” This declaration shows how important
calls Willie, try for home the next day—and then says the name family and memories are to keeping a sense of oneself under difficult
Willie won’t work and asks for David’s real name. David tells conditions like poverty and oppression.
Petah his name was David, but David is “dead.” Petah agrees
that David should pick a new name when he’s “ready.” They
return to the pipe. Petah goes to sleep, and David watches the
sky all night.

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The next morning, the other children try to get David to Earlier in the novel, the reader learned that Tsotsi had emotional
scavenge with them, but he refuses and sits in the pipe all day. It associations with the smell of wet newspaper. The novel now reveals
rains and gets the papers they stuff into the pipes wet, which that his traumatic experience sleeping in a pipe as a homeless child
makes David associate the “scent of damp paper” with encoded these associations in his mind.
“mournful” emotions. Already, his only memory is of the other
children, and their absence makes him lonely. He’s also terribly
hungry.

When the other children come back to the pipes that evening, In this passage, the novel finally makes explicit that David is Tsotsi
Petah tells him that if David scavenges with them the next day, as a child. Although the adult Tsotsi embraced the “tsotsi”
he’ll get bread. David agrees. When he asks where Simon is, no stereotype—his “gangster” identity—the reader now learns that he
one answers. While scavenging that day, a shopkeeper runs him did not originally choose this stereotype for himself: a shopkeeper
off and yells “tsotsi” at him. Later, when the group is trying to imposed it on him when he was a starving, homeless child. Thus, the
pick a name for David, he tells them he’s “Tsotsi.” novel suggests that Tsotsi became how he is due to apartheid law’s
destruction of his family and the subsequent cruelty that his racist
society showed him.

Eventually the police disperse the children by the river. Tsotsi The police break up the group of homeless children apparently
joins other gangs, but he always remembers how he learned to without trying to find their families or otherwise aid them, which
survive. He gives up “sympathy and compassion” and spurns shows that the police’s job in apartheid South African society is to
memory, which in any case he doesn’t have. control Black people, not help them. Here the reader learns that
Tsotsi rejected “sympathy,” which he has only recently rediscovered
in the novel’s present timeline, due to his separation from his
mother, his ensuing homelessness, and the gang life that
homelessness introduced him to. The novel seems to be suggesting,
then, that oppression and cruelty can destroy sympathy and breed
hatred.

CHAPTER 10
Tsotsi wakes to knocking on his door and “instinctively” reaches Earlier in the novel, the reader learned that Tsotsi always grabs his
for his knife. Without grabbing it, he has another idea and knife and tests its sharpness as soon as he wakes up, as a way of
checks for the baby at the foot of the bed. He hears knocking clearing his mind and maintaining his stereotyped “gangster”
again and thinks perhaps Miriam has come back—but wonders identity. Here, Tsotsi breaks that habit: rather than picking up the
why she would. He grabs his knife, and instead of comforting knife, he checks on the baby first, which suggests that his parental
him, it triggers memories of the children by the river, Petah, and role is becoming more important to him that his stereotyped
his mother. “gangster” identity. When he does eventually grab the knife,
meanwhile, it no longer clears his mind. Instead, it makes him
remember the events that led to him becoming “Tsotsi.” By
reclaiming his memories, Tsotsi is moving further from the “tsotsi”
stereotype and becoming more aware of himself as a unique
individual with a particular past.

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The knocking continues, so Tsotsi asks who it is. Die Aap calls Whereas Tsotsi is breaking with old habits, Die Aap is sticking to
out, asking for Tsotsi. Tsotsi puts the baby under the bed, opens them: he shows up at Tsotsi’s just because he always does. In telling
the door, and asks what time it is. Die Aap tells him it’s morning. Die Aap to go away, Tsotsi is rejecting Die Aap’s way of living
Tsotsi asks what he wants, and Die Aap points out he always according to habit.
shows up at Tsotsi’s. Tsotsi tells him not to and shuts the door.

Through the window, Die Aap asks why. Tsotsi thinks about his Tsotsi considers his mother “the beginning of himself,” which
memories, especially his mother, whom he considers “the illustrates both how important parents are to their children’s
beginning of himself.” He says “my mother” out loud. Die Aap, identities and how traumatic losing his mother was for Tsotsi
surprised at the idea of Tsotsi’s mother, mentions his own specifically—it led to him embracing the “tsotsi” identity that he’s
mother is dead. Tsotsi is struck that every person, including now struggling to discard. Much like Tsotsi’s earlier recognition that
Boston, Die Aap, and Butcher, has a mother. He asks where his reflection could be that of any man, his revelation here that
Butcher is, and Die Aap replies that Butcher isn’t coming. Tsotsi every person has a mother shows he’s coming to appreciate the
ponders what this means. If the gang is over, will Tsotsi join common humanity of all individuals. Yet he and Die Aap are both
another one, as he has since childhood? surprised at the idea that the other had a mother—hinting that up
to this point, neither one has fully perceived the other’s humanity.
Finally, when Tsotsi wonders whether he’ll join another gang, it
suggests that while he is breaking with his old “gangster” habits, he
does not yet feel fully free of them.

Die Aap explains Butcher is angry that Tsotsi had “done a job Butcher is angry that Tsotsi “done a job alone”—in other words, he
alone” and, though he and Die Aap came back to Tsotsi’s room believes that Tsotsi killed Morris Tshabalala when the gang went to
twice after that, once Tsotsi wasn’t there and once he was with the city and resents that he didn’t get to participate in the murder.
a woman. Tsotsi asks, “So what?” Die Aap says Butcher has This detail reveals Butcher’s sadism. By contrast, Die Aap’s return to
joined another gang led by a man named Buster, and Tsotsi asks Tsotsi reveals Die Aap’s loyalty but also his tendency to get stuck in
why Die Aap didn’t join too. Die Aap points out that he’s been in habits.
a gang with Tsotsi for two years. Tsotsi is baffled that Die Aap
has been following him for that long.

Die Aap begins to suggest that he and Tsotsi reform the gang At this moment, Tsotsi both recalls the beginning of his career in
with new members when the baby under the bed begins to cry. gangs—which has been his lifestyle “since the river”—and decides
When Die Aap notices Tsotsi isn’t reacting to the noise, Die Aap that career is “finished.” Since Tsotsi remembering how he became a
pretends not to hear it. Meanwhile, Tsotsi is thinking: “start gang member and deciding to stop being a gang member coincide,
again, since the river…but what about the river?” The baby the novel suggests that to change one’s habits or pattern of life, a
stops crying. Tsotsi tells Die Aap they aren’t going to reform the person has to remember and understand how they got to where
gang, which is “finished.” Die Aap asks Tsotsi what he should do. they are.
Tsotsi tells him to leave. They stare at each other, and then Die
Aap exits.

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From the window, Tsotsi watches Die Aap leave. He wonders This passage reveals more of Tsotsi’s confused motives for taking
what he himself meant by saying the gang was “finished” and care of the baby. The baby’s abandonment by his mother reminded
thinks disjointed thoughts about Boston and his own life before Tsotsi of his childhood separation from his own mother. This
the river. When the baby resumes crying, Tsotsi fetches him connection makes Tsotsi think of his adopted baby as an extension
from under the bed and feels his “reality,” in contrast with his of himself; he not only sympathizes with the baby but identifies with
own memories’ unreality. He has begun to associate the baby him. Yet the baby possesses “reality,” whereas Tsotsi’s former self,
with David—that is, with himself as a child—and feels sorry for David, no longer exists. Tsotsi may be caring for the baby, then, to
the baby because he believes the baby will experience the make up for the care that he himself didn’t receive as a child.
terrible events that he himself did. He thinks that if the baby
dies, he’ll have to shoulder the burden of his memories by
himself. He calls the baby “David” and says he’s going to fetch
“mother’s milk” for him.

Tsotsi looks through his window for Miriam, who has gotten in Instead of coercing Miriam to help him, Tsotsi appeals to her with
line for the water tap. He sees her glance toward his room and his eyes. He also observes her more closely than he did previously.
speculates that it will be easier to persuade her to come with This close observation may suggest sexual attraction, but together
him this time, since she doesn’t seem scared. She gets water with his more respectful treatment of Miriam, it also suggests that
and begins walking away. Tsotsi notes her looks and posture in he is getting better at recognizing her as an individual with
a way he didn’t before. He leaves his room and waits outside so value—sympathizing with her, in other words.
she’ll spot him. Tsotsi tries to communicate through eye contact
that he wants her help feeding the baby. She follows him back
toward his room.

Once inside, Tsotsi demands Miriam feed the baby. She balks in Miriam’s decision to care for the baby above and beyond what
the doorway but then enters. When Miriam produces ointment Tsotsi has demanded of her hints that she regrets her earlier disgust
for the baby’s mouth, new clothes, and baby powder, Tsotsi with the baby and sympathizes with the baby’s situation. Although
realizes she was planning to come back. She begins to Tsotsi has been acting in a parental role toward the baby, he is not
breastfeed the baby, which at first drinks milk but then refuses. ready to claim the identity of “father.” His statement that David
Miriam tries to coax the baby to drink, asks his name, and “never saw his father” betrays how closely he is currently identifying
suggests calling him Peter. Tsotsi says the baby is called “David.” the baby with his memories of himself as a child.
Miriam asks whether Tsotsi is the father, but Tsotsi tells her
David “never saw his father.”

The baby begins to breastfeed properly. Miriam asks Tsotsi to That Tsotsi wants to kill Miriam when she offers to adopt the baby
give her the baby so she can care for him. She offers to let shows both how emotionally invested he is in the baby and how,
Tsotsi visit and says the baby can play with her son. Tsotsi’s first when feeling threatened, he is still in danger of reverting to his old,
impulse is to murder Miriam. He points out to himself that he violent patterns of behavior. When he reviews what he has done for
bought the baby milk and killed the ants. Then he thinks about the baby (buying the milk, killing the ants), he seems to be
the river and how he used to play with other children in a reassuring himself that he's an adequate parental stand-in. His
derelict car. intrusive memories of childhood imply that his identification of the
baby with his childhood self, David, is motivating his behavior: he
wants to care for the baby to compensate for the neglect and
homelessness he experienced after his mother’s arrest.

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Miriam tells Tsotsi that the baby is deathly ill. She wants to care In previous moments, the novel has implied that religion is
for him because she shouldn’t have tried to refuse him milk powerless to help the oppressed. In this passage, however, Miriam’s
before, and caring for him pleases her. Tsotsi thinks that the story suggests that religion can increase religious people’s sympathy
baby’s mother gave him to Tsotsi, and so the baby belongs to for others. Before praying, Miriam wanted to reject the baby Tsotsi
Tsotsi. Miriam tells Tsotsi that the previous night she was forced her to feed; due to her prayer—which a voice, which she
praying when a voice asked her why her prayer should be presumably believes to be God’s, answered—she comes to
answered if she had “no milk for babies.” Tsotsi says aloud that sympathize with the baby and desires to save his life. The voice’s
the baby belongs to him. Miriam points out he isn’t the father. implication that being good means having “milk for babies” suggests
Tsotsi repeats that the baby belongs to him, and Miriam asks that caring for children, regardless of one’s biological relationship
how he came to have the baby. He says the mother, without with them, is the sign of a moral, sympathetic person.
crying, put the baby in a box, gave the box to Tsotsi, and ran
away into the night.

Miriam demands the whole story, so Tsotsi tells her. She asks The novel doesn’t clarify what Tsotsi means when he says he “must
how long ago it happened. He tells her three days and explains find out,” but this passage does provide a clue. Immediately before
some of what has happened since. She asks what Tsotsi plans to he says it, he's thinking about the yellow dog—which represents the
do with the baby, and Tsotsi says he’s going to keep him. She destruction of families by apartheid, in particular his own family’s
asks why. Tsotsi considers the question, thinking of the yellow destruction and his ensuing homelessness and gang involvement.
dog and the connection he feels to the baby, and says he “must He’s also thinking about the baby, whom he identifies with David,
find out.” Miriam, unable to think clearly about this response, his childhood self. By caring for the baby, Tsotsi may be trying to find
puts a milk bottle on the table, tells Tsotsi to feed the baby the out what would have happened in his own childhood if he hadn’t
next day, and announces she’ll come by. Then she leaves. been abandoned.

Tsotsi, periodically looking around to make sure Miriam isn’t Despite Tsotsi’s sympathy for the baby, his identification with the
tailing him, goes to hide the baby in the demolished ruins. Then baby and desire to keep the baby for himself make him act selfishly:
he walks to the pipes down by the river. He finds the derelict after all, even if Tsotsi is now afraid Miriam will take the baby from
car and takes it as proof that his memories are correct. him, the baby would be safer under Miriam’s supervision than alone
Afterward, he runs back home and enters a shebeen to ask among ruins. Tsotsi’s behavior here implies that identification is not
after Boston. always a positive force—it can also lead to questionable behavior.

CHAPTER 11
Boston has been lying unconscious or drinking in a shebeen run Marty’s claim that she wouldn’t treat even “a mad dog,” let alone a
by a woman, Marty, since Tsotsi beat him up. When Tsotsi human, the way Tsotsi treated Boston implies that people should
locates Boston there, Marty is trying to rouse Boston and kick treat each other with some minimum standard of care just because
him out because he’s urinated on the floor. Tsotsi tells Marty to of their shared group identity—their common humanity. Yet she lets
leave Boston alone. Marty asks what Tsotsi wants, and Tsotsi Tsotsi take Boston away relatively quickly, which indicates that she
says he wants Boston. Marty, putting herself between the men, doesn’t necessarily want to display that care toward Boston herself.
says she wouldn’t treat “a mad dog” the way Tsotsi treated
Boston and asks Tsotsi what he has to say for himself. Tsotsi
says he wants to talk to Boston. Marty lights a cigarette,
shrugs, and agrees to let Tsotsi take him.

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Tsotsi tries to wake Boston up but can’t. He picks Boston up When Tsotsi carries Boston “like a baby,” the novel suggests that
and begins carrying him “like a baby” back to his room. On the Tsotsi’s new parental identity is making him gentler and more
way, Boston wakes, struggles out of Tsotsi’s grip, and runs. sympathetic toward someone he has previously harmed. The “WE
Tsotsi follows Boston until he collapses near a fence with a sign WON’T MOVE” sign, meanwhile, is an allusion to Black protests
on it that says, “WE WON’T MOVE.” Tsotsi puts Boston on his against the government’s relocation of non-white populations to
feet and walks him toward Tsotsi’s room. When Boston enforce racial segregation. It reminds the reader that the novel is
collapses, Tsotsi carries him the rest of the way. taking place against a larger context in which the government is
demolishing Black neighborhoods—foreshadowing that this context
may become important later.

In the room, Tsotsi puts Boston to bed, removes his soiled Once again, Tsotsi is caring for Boston as he has previously cared for
clothes, and throws them away. Seeing Boston naked, Tsotsi the baby: throwing out his soiled clothes, putting him to bed, and so
realizes Boston is extremely thin, his eye swollen, his nose forth. That he cares for Boston—and that he wants to vomit when
broken, and his mouth sliced up. Tsotsi feels like vomiting. He he sees the physical damage he’s inflicted on Boston—shows how
checks how much money he has and goes out to buy food. much his character has changed since the novel’s beginning, when
When he returns with bread and sourmilk, Boston is still he felt only hatred for Boston.
immobile on the bed. Tsotsi eats and watches him.

Boston was born Walter Nguza in Umtata to a “humble, tired Umtata (now called Mthatha) is a small city almost 375 miles
old woman.” He went to St. John’s College, to St. Peter’s High south of Johannesburg. That Boston was able to travel so far for
School in Johannesburg, and finally to a teacher’s college. His high school, and did so well in college, suggests that despite his
first two years in college, he came first in his class. Though he “humble, tired” family and oppressed social position within
was a small, bespectacled man who couldn’t get women, his apartheid South Africa, he was somewhat upwardly mobile before
mother was “very proud” of him. Then, the year he would have his expulsion for attempted rape. The repeated mentions of his
graduated, the school expelled him “for trying to rape a fellow mother, meanwhile, foreshadow that she may be important to the
student.” rest of his story.

In a flashback, it’s revealed that Boston wrote the preceding Earlier in the novel, Tsotsi used the word “finished” to end his
account of his life some time after his expulsion. He likes it criminal career when Die Aap suggested they form a new gang.
because, without excess emotion or drama, it tells how his life Boston uses the same word, “finished,” to describe how his old life
progressed until it “broke.” One time, when he reads it aloud to “broke.” The repetition suggests that the novel uses the word
members of his gang, they ask him what happened afterward. “finished” to mark major changes in identity. Just as Tsotsi
He tells them nothing did: after the rape accusation, everything definitively “finished” being a gang member and has to become
was “finished.” They ask him about the girl, but he can’t tell something new, so Boston moved in the other direction—he
them. “finished” being a student and became a gang member after he
attempted to rape someone.

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Boston does tell the story once. He says he was going for a walk Boston’s story suggests that he tried to rape the girl because he
at night when he met a fellow student, female, by the tennis didn’t understand her—in other words, he didn’t adequately
courts. Girls frightened Boston, and he wanted to flee, but she sympathize with her perspective. He was unable to grasp that she
struck up a conversation with him. She began the physical “just wanted to play”—that is, to have some romantic contact but
contact with him, but she “just wanted to play.” Not realizing not sex—and so ended up attacking her. The story, then, strengthens
this, he tried to go further. She began screaming and crying, and the connection the novel has previously drawn between a lack of
Boston was discovered with her like that. sympathy for others and violent behavior.

Boston wonders who, if anyone, is to blame—himself, the girl, By “Adam,” Boston means the first man God created in the Bible.
those who discovered them, or even Boston’s mother—but Rather than take individual responsibility for his attempted rape of
decides it’s all the same, because regardless, it ends with his the other student, Boston decides that mistakes like his are inherent
expulsion. This event makes Boston think about mistakes. to human identity and that humanity is therefore “one big mistake.”
When he is 24 and drunk, he declares everything a mistake:
“The whole bloody thing, from beginning to end, from Adam to
Walter Boston Nguza is one big mistake.”

After his expulsion, Boston goes to the railway station for a late By lying to and avoiding his mother, Boston continues the novel’s
train. Waiting at the station, he pictures his “proud” mother pattern of children separated from their parents. Unlike the
greeting him and realizes he can’t bear to go home. Instead he separation of Tsotsi from his mother or of Miriam’s husband from
writes his mother a letter saying he finished teacher’s college his baby, however, this separation occurs due to Boston’s desire to
early, is going to look for a job, and will send her a new address protect his mother’s pride, not due to the social context of
soon. apartheid.

After spending a week homeless in the city, Boston meets As previously mentioned, Black South Africans under apartheid
Johnboy Lethetwa at the Pass Office. Boston goes to the Pass were required to carry passes (or “pass books”) that determined
Office because he has a relative there he plans to ask for help. where they were allowed to go. If Black people didn’t have all the
When he arrives, he waits outside and thinks. He’s worried the right entries in their pass book—including the signature of a white
relative will tell his mother and unsure what he should ask for. employer—they could be arrested and put in jail. Johnboy’s story
Johnboy sits beside him and asks Boston to read a piece of highlights the illogic and cruelty of apartheid pass laws: to get an
paper for him. Boston tells him the paper says, “you can’t work employer—and stay out of jail—Black people needed to have had an
at Natty Outfitters because your last employer did not sign employer already.
your book.” Johnboy says, “They’ll pick me up.” Boston asks why
the employer didn’t sign the book, and Johnboy explains he was
in jail because he didn’t have a previous employer.

Boston asks to see Johnboy’s pass, fills it out and signs it, and In this passage, the reader sees a new side to Boston’s character.
tells Johnboy he now has a previous employer. Johnboy takes Whereas previously he has been drunk, cowardly, and violent, here
the pass and leaves. Boston is about to go inside to speak with he uses his education generously to help a man in danger of being
his relative when Johnboy returns, hands Boston four more jailed due to an unjust, racist law. Ironically, this generous act begins
passbooks, and asks for previous employers. When Boston a criminal career in forgery—which shows how unjust apartheid
balks, Johnboy gives Boston two 10-shilling notes. Boston laws drive many of the novel’s characters to criminal behavior.
signs the passbooks. Johnboy brings back more.

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By lunchtime, Boston has earned four pounds. Johnboy Johnboy’s suggestion that he and Boston “specialize in previous
suggests they “specialize in previous employers” and asks employers” reveals a demand for forgeries to protect Black South
Boston where he lives. When Boston admits he’s homeless, Africans from unjust, racist pass laws—which again shows how
Johnboy offers to share his hostel room. Boston writes his unjust apartheid laws drive crime. That Boston sends money to his
mother a letter, with a pound note in it, telling her he’s doing mother as soon as he’s earned anything, meanwhile, implies how
well. important she is to him and how badly he wants to conceal his
difficult circumstances from her.

Boston and Johnboy begin forging various permits as well as The expansion of Boston’s forgeries from passbooks to other
employers’ signatures. Boston keeps sending his mother required permits suggests how many different ways bureaucracy
money. Boston realizes he and Johnboy are not similar people, under apartheid oppressed Black South Africans. Boston’s drinking
but that doesn’t bother him. Boston goes to shebeens to think problem, meanwhile, illustrates how bad behavior can develop into
and drink until, without realizing it, he’s developed a drinking a habit, difficult to break.
problem.

At Marty’s shebeen, Boston meets another gang. One day, after Boston’s transition from Johnboy’s non-violent forgery business to
Johnboy is arrested for the passbook business, Boston Tsotsi’s violent gang hints that once you are in the habit of criminal
overhears the gang talking about a problem. Boston suggests activity, you are more likely to graduate to more serious crimes.
an obvious answer. The gang offers him part of their haul, and Boston’s deceitful correspondence with his mother shows both how
eventually he becomes a member. Meanwhile, he is receiving much he cares about her pride and how ashamed he is of his
letters from his mother begging him to visit. One day, he situation.
dresses up himself and Butcher, has their photograph taken,
and sends it home with a letter claiming he is working as a
teacher and Boston is his coworker.

In the shebeen subculture, Boston gains a reputation as an Boston’s reliance on alcohol to deal with “a rough job”—the violence
intelligent but timid person who abuses alcohol “after a rough that occasionally comes with gang activity—shows how bad habits
job.” Yet his good manners endear him to Marty. They strike up (in this case, alcohol abuse and violence) can be mutually
a friendship and then a romance, but their romance ends the reinforcing. His cruel treatment of Marty due to his own guilt hints
first time Boston does a job where someone is murdered. that people who hate themselves—who do not have a positive
Afterwards, he takes his misery out on Marty and “drag[s] her individual identity—are more likely to be hateful toward others.
down as low as his words.” Marty doesn’t retaliate, but their
relationship—the sole romance of Boston’s life—ends. Boston
regrets his cruelty to her. Because the police are searching for
Boston’s gang, they disperse, and Boston avoids Marty’s. He
approaches her later, but she treats him like a stranger. Then,
two years later, he comes to her the night Tsotsi beats him up.

Back in the present, Boston wakes up in the dark and asks Like Morris Tshabalala, who seemed to think that crying made him
where he is. Tsotsi lights a candle, and they stare at each other. less of a man, Boston seems to think that being physically beaten
At first, Boston is scared, but then he remembers how totally destroys his masculine identity, his “manhood.” In Boston’s case, his
Tsotsi destroyed him and his “manhood” and he stops being failure to live up to masculine stereotypes makes him passive and
scared. He closes his eyes and asks why Tsotsi brought him to uninterested in what’s going on around him. Tsotsi, by contrast, is
his room. Tsotsi says he wants to talk. Boston doesn’t care, trying to reach out to Boston and express sympathy with him by
though this event would once have delighted him. Boston saying, “I felt you.”
draws Tsotsi’s attention to the physical damage he’s done, and
Tsotsi replies, “I felt you.” Boston is curious what Tsotsi means,
but the curiosity passes.

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Boston says, “My youth,” because he has been thinking about it Tsotsi’s memories of childhood motivate him to try to understand
since Tsotsi beat him. Tsotsi says he needs to know and and change his present life. By contrast, Boston’s memories of his
demands that Boston, who used to be a teacher, tell him. “youth”—before he derailed his life with the attempted rape—leave
Boston thinks he sees a light in Tsotsi’s eyes that wasn’t there him unmotivated and pessimistic. This contrast suggests that while
before. He denies knowing anything. Tsotsi, thinking Boston remembering the past is necessary to understanding and taking
means something else, tells him about the baby. Boston control of your life, memory alone isn’t sufficient—you also need to
ponders the story’s meaning, loses concentration, and blurts believe in your own power to change. Notably, Tsotsi has already
out, “The fields of my youth.” changed a great deal by this point in the novel: whereas at the
novel’s beginning he beat Boston for asking him too many questions,
now he is volunteering information about his relationship with the
baby that Boston hasn’t asked for.

Tsotsi doesn’t understand what Boston means, reflects on his Again, the novel associates the yellow dog with Tsotsi’s mother,
own ignorance, and starts sweating. He tells Boston about emphasizing that the yellow dog represents Tsotsi’s separation from
stalking Morris and sparing his life. Boston listens but loses his his mother—and, by implication, apartheid’s destruction of Black
train of thought thinking about mercy and the fields of his families more generally. As Die Aap was surprised in an earlier
youth. He tries to catch the thread of Tsotsi’s story, hears chapter that Tsotsi has a mother, so Boston is surprised here, a
something about a yellow dog and Tsotsi’s mother, and is repetition that underlines how the other gang members don’t see
surprised by Tsotsi having a mother. He recalls his own mother Tsotsi as fully human (after all, as Tsotsi has realized, every human
and wonders whether she’s still waiting for him to come home. being has a mother).

Tsotsi explains that he only started remembering his childhood Boston’s claim that everyone is sick from life indicates his pessimism
the day before. Sitting by the bed, he points out that Boston has and hopelessness. Yet his sympathy for Tsotsi’s pain motivates him
read books and asks him what the story means. Boston says to recognize that while he, Boston, may not be able to break free
everyone is sick from life. Tsotsi’s head falls, and Boston feels from his destructive habits or his criminal identity, Tsotsi can. His
intense sympathy for his pain. He touches Tsotsi and tells him explicit association of Tsotsi’s transformation with God, here,
that he, Boston, is totally ignorant, but that Tsotsi is “different” suggests that human sympathy has a religious source.
because he’s changing. He urges Tsotsi not to be scared. Tsotsi
asks what changed him, and Boston replies that Tsotsi is now
talking about God.

Tsotsi sits quietly through the night. Boston sings part of a The hymn “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” includes lyrics referring to
hymn, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” Dawn comes. Boston the singer’s childhood and Jesus’s own childhood, as well as a prayer
speaks again about the fields of his youth and begins to leave. that the singer be more like Jesus. The allusion to the hymn here
Tsotsi holds him back, but Boston tells him he needs to leave thus reinforces the importance of childhood to both Boston and
and insists that the fields of his youth were green. Tsotsi gives Tsotsi’s lives and foreshadows that someone in the novel may
Boston clothing and offers him food, which Boston refuses. He imitate Christ in some way. By offering clothing and food to Boston,
watches Boston flee down the street. whom he recently beat, , Tsotsi demonstrates his rejection of his old
“gangster” identity and his violent habits.

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CHAPTER 12
Isaiah is trying to plant a row of seedlings straight but fears he Up to this point the novel has mostly represented racism as a
has planted them crooked, despite Miss Marriot’s structural force, impacting the Black characters’ lives not through
demonstrations. From the office window, Miss Marriot asks their encounters with individual racists, but through their
whether everything is fine. Pretending he can’t hear her due to oppression by racist laws. Here, however, the novel foregrounds
old age, Isaiah measures the rows with his hand to demonstrate interpersonal racism in South African society. Although Isaiah (who
he’s planting correctly. Yet he hears her coming. Miss Marriot is Black) is elderly, his white employer Miss Marriot calls him a
asks him what he's done. He sneaks a look at her “white, “naughty boy” and condescends to him as if he were stupid or a
powdery face and thin lips” and sees her smiling. She calls him a child.
“naughty boy” and reminds him to plant one hand apart.

Isaiah replies, “Yes, Miss Marry.” Miss Marriot corrects his Here, the novel jokingly reverses an anti-Black racist stereotype
pronunciation of her name and says he has to replant the about Black people smelling bad by having a Black character find
seedlings. He agrees dutifully. They pause in silence, and he the “white” smell of his employer “repellent”—that is, disgusting.
notices he finds her “white, powdery” odor “repellent.” She tells
him to start working.

Isaiah starts replanting. He wishes Miss Marriot would leave Again, the novel is reversing a racist stereotype. Under apartheid,
him alone. When he works by himself, his memory helps the the South African government outlawed marriage and sexual
time pass quickly. When she watches him work, the time passes relationships between non-white and white people. One law had
painfully slowly. But Miss Marriot stays to watch and criticize, harsher penalties for non-white women who “seduced” white
insisting on showing him how to treat roots gently. He hates men—the racist assumption apparently being that non-white people
her being near him demonstrating things, because once he saw would particularly want to have sex with white people, who are
her “flat, white breasts” down the front of her collar and once somehow more desirable. In the novel, on the other hand, the only
she farted. She insists on him watching and asks whether he extended contact between a Black person (Isaiah) and a white
was doing it the way she is. He says no and reflects, “To an person (Miss Marriot) involves him being physically disgusted by
incredible extent a peaceful existence was dependent upon her. Isaiah’s comment that “peaceful existence” requires him to
knowing just when to say no or yes to the white man.” come up with the right responses for “the white man” shows how, in
Black-white interactions in apartheid South Africa, all the power
resided with the white person.

Miss Marriot accuses Isaiah of wanting the plants to die. She This passage makes clear that—despite Boston’s argument that God
calls him a “naughty boy” again, claims to have completed all his and religion increase sympathy between people—religiosity can
work, and reminds him that he’s “planting on holy ground, coexist with racism, as demonstrated by church lady Miss Marriot.
because it [is] church ground.” After that, she leaves.

Isaiah plants seedlings and thinks about white Although Isaiah recognizes that the same white-supremacist power
people—specifically, the great difference between the two dynamics are at play in all his interactions with white people, he
white people for whom he works, Miss Marriot and Rev. does not assume that all white individuals are the same—he sees
Ransome. He reflects that while Miss Marriot tries to teach differences between his two white employers.
him to plant, Rev. Ransome has taught him how to ring the
church bell.

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Shortly after Isaiah began working for the church, Rev. Rev. Ransome assumes Isaiah is Christian because the name
Ransome approached him and asked his name. When he said “Isaiah” also belongs to an Old Testament prophet in the Bible
Isaiah, Rev. Ransome sked whether he was Christian. He said whom Christians believed prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ,
yes. Rev. Ransome asked whether he wanted to ring the bell making Isaiah a logical name for Christians to give their son. Rev.
and offered to show him how. Before the evening service that Ransome’s comment that some believers are “lazy and don’t want to
day, Rev. Ransome showed Isaiah how to tug the bell rope and hear” suggests that it isn’t enough to believe—you also have to be
asked whether he believed in God. Isaiah said he did. Rev. motivated and break with bad habits to be a good Christian. Isaiah’s
Ransome told him that the bell serves to summon believers, preference for Rev. Ransome suggests he likes how Rev. Ransome
including those who “are lazy and don’t want to hear.” That treats him as a competent worker who doesn’t need constant
encounter was all Rev. Ransome told Isaiah about the bell, in supervision—whereas Miss Marriot, due to her racism, supervises
contrast with Miss Marriot constantly bothering him. him like he’s a child.

When Isaiah sits under a bluegum in the churchyard to drink Like Cassim and Morris, Isaiah at a glance recognizes Tsotsi as a
his tea, he sees a man (Tsotsi) sitting on the sidewalk looking “tsotsi-type,” a gang member. Unlike Cassim and Morris, however,
exhausted. His exhaustion reminds Isaiah of when he worked as Isaiah immediately sympathizes with Tsotsi’s exhaustion because
a farm laborer. It strikes Isaiah as strange that a “tsotsi-type,” he can remember being that exhausted. Isaiah’s memory and his
who doesn’t work hard, would be so exhausted. Though Isaiah tendency to act based on “what he had been through himself” allow
knows other people would tell him to avoid Tsotsi, he derives him to extend kindness to Tsotsi in a way other characters haven’t.
meaning from life based on “what he [can] recognize or
remember, what he knew or what he had been through himself.”
He goes and offers Tsotsi some tea.

Tsotsi takes the tea and looks at the church thoughtfully. Isaiah Isaiah gets the name of the church wrong (it’s Church of Christ the
says, “The Church of Christ the Dreamer.” Tsotsi states, Redeemer), which implies that he may not have had a very good
haltingly, that God is inside the church. Isaiah affirms it and tells religious education—casting a negative light on the white people
Tsotsi he rings the church bell. Tsotsi asks why. Isaiah says it’s who run the church. When Tsotsi responds strongly to Isaiah’s claim
to call believers, including the lazy ones who “don’t want to that some people “don’t want to hear” God’s call, it hints that Tsotsi
hear.” Tsotsi seems struck by this answer. himself is ambivalent about his possibly religious experiences.

Miss Marriot calls to Isaiah, asks him whether he’s finished Miss Marriot’s obvious desire to drive Tsotsi, a young Black man she
planting marigolds, and tells him they don’t allow “strangers” in doesn’t know, away from the church suggests she’s suspicious of him
the church yard. Then she asks Tsotsi’s name. He leaves due to racism. Her attempt to cloak her suspicion and hostility by
without answering. She asks Isaiah who Tsotsi is, but Isaiah says claiming she wants Tsotsi to pray suggests that her religious feelings
he doesn’t know. Miss Marriot tells Isaiah to tell Tsotsi that the are only skin-deep, whereas her racism is entrenched.
church yard isn’t a park, but that they do want him to pray. Then
she tells Isaiah to come when he’s done planting and returns to
her office.

Tsotsi comes back to the church fence while Isaiah is planting When Isaiah misnames Jesus Christ as “Jesus Cries,” the novel once
and asks whether Isaiah has been inside the church. Isaiah says again suggests that apartheid has prevented many Black people
yes. Tsotsi asks what’s inside, so Isaiah lists things, including from getting an education in general and religious education
“Jesus Cries on a cross.” Tsotsi asks what Jesus does, and Isaiah specifically. Isaiah’s discussion of the crucifixion may foreshadow an
explains that people killed him on a cross after his father, God, act of self-sacrifice later in the novel.
sent him. Tsotsi asks about God. In response, Isaiah asks Tsotsi
why he has so many questions and why he’s so tired.

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Tsotsi says he wants to know about God because “He’s got Tsotsi’s comment that God’s “got something to do with” him
something to do with me.” Isaiah tells Tsotsi God created suggests that he believes Boston’s claims about God without fully
everything. God saved the world from a flood by putting understanding them. Isaiah’s inaccurate rendering of the Bible
everything in a boat built by Moses, who sailed it “into a (Noah built the ark, not Moses; Moses never reached the promised
promised land,” after which “Maria and Joseph gave birth to land; Joseph was not Jesus’s biological father) yet again suggests a
Jesus.” When Tsotsi asks whether there’s anything else, Isaiah lack of religious education for poor Black people in apartheid
explains that Rev. Ransome tells part of the story each Sunday society; yet Isaiah also grasps a very rough outline of the biblical
and hasn’t finished yet. narrative, which suggests his interest in and devotion to Christianity
is sincere.

Isaiah realizes that—distracted by talking with Tsotsi—he has Isaiah makes several accurate theological claims here: according to
started planting crookedly again. He returns to the place in the Christian belief, God is everywhere and does want people to be
row where he began making mistakes. Tsotsi, tailing him, asks good. Notably, if Tsotsi becomes a Christian, he must stop “stealing,
where God is and what he wants. Isaiah says God is and killing and robbing”—permanently break with gang life and give
everywhere and that he wants people to be good and to stop up his old, violent habits. Here, the novel may be suggesting that
“stealing, and killing and robbing,” because these things are sins. God has somehow, mysteriously, called Tsotsi to change his life. Yet
Tsotsi asks what happens if you sin, and Isaiah replies that when Isaiah entertains Tsotsi’s suggestion that maybe Jesus
Jesus will punish you with hell. Tsotsi asks whether punishment punishes sinners by killing them (which is not an orthodox Christian
means killing. Isaiah replies, “Maybe.” belief), it leaves open a more cynical interpretation: that God is just
another, bigger gang boss who answers violence with more
violence.

Tsotsi leaves for a time but returns to ask Isaiah when they sing. This passage highlights the importance of forgiveness and
Isaiah says that evening and invites Tsotsi to join. Tsotsi is redemption in Christianity: even Tsotsi, who has murdered people, is
shocked. Isaiah tells him that everyone is welcome: “It’s the welcome in “the House of God” if he is willing to listen to God’s
House of God. I ring His bell. Will you come?” Tsotsi agrees. “bell”—that is, God’s demand that sinners change their evil habits.

Tsotsi, feeling weightless, walks down the street holding the That Tsotsi feels weightless and that Miriam asks him what’s wrong,
baby in his coat. Miriam, who’s in the yard doing washing, spots implying that he looks disturbed, may indicate that he’s having an
him. When he walks up to her, she leads him into her room, intense reaction to his religious conversation with Isaiah, that he’s
takes the baby, and puts it on the bed. Tsotsi claims the baby very worried about the sick baby, or perhaps both.
wasn’t hungry, but Miriam asks whether Tsotsi gave it the milk
she left. Tsotsi says the baby vomited it up. Miriam asks
whether he has money, and he says no. Miriam leaves to buy
medicine, returns, and feeds some to the baby. Then she gives
him milk. She looks at Tsotsi, asks what’s wrong, and offers him
food.

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While he eats, Miriam tells him that when she first realized Miriam seems to be implying that at first, she felt that breastfeeding
Tsotsi wanted her to feed the baby, “it was worse than if…” a strange baby would be worse than Tsotsi raping her. Her later
Rather than completing the thought, she says Tsotsi knows decision that she should give her mother’s milk to the baby, on the
what she means. She says she thought it was worse because other hand, suggests she has come to believe that due to
her baby has a father, Simon, who vanished—but she was individuals’ common humanity, all adults should be willing to act as
wrong, because mother’s milk should be used. Then she admits parents to children in need. This decision is freeing for her: it allows
that she believes her husband Simon is dead. her to break with her old, antisocial habits and come to terms with
her husband’s probable death.

Miriam concludes that she, her baby, baby David, and Tsotsi all Miriam’s claim—“Tomorrow comes and you got to live”—is a hopeful
have to live: “That’s all it is. Tomorrow comes and you got to one. It suggests that as long as people are alive, they have the
live.” Tsotsi thinks of his own history and silently agrees. Miriam capacity to break with their old, destructive habits and make new
offers to let him rest at her house, and she goes outside to choices. Tsotsi agrees and, to an extent, acts according to his
finish the washing. Tsotsi watches the baby. When Miriam agreement: by having the church bell ring as Tsotsi is leaving, the
comes back inside, he says he knows she wants the baby and novel implies that Tsotsi has accepted Isaiah’s invitation to go to
asks her please not to take him. Miriam asks Tsotsi when he’ll church, a repudiation of his old “gangster” identity. Yet Tsotsi is still
be back and asks whether he’s going. The church bell rings. too possessive of the baby, with whom he identifies, to trust the
Later, Tsotsi returns, takes the baby, and hides it again in the baby with Miriam, which suggests that his transformation is not yet
ruins because he doesn’t trust Miriam enough. complete.

Tsotsi wakes up. He remembers that Miriam told him, “Come In this passage, the reader learns Tsotsi’s real, full name—“David
back, Tsotsi.” He thinks he needs to tell her his real name. In the Madondo”—for the first time. That he decides to tell Miriam his
street he says out loud, “My name is David Madondo,” and whole name shows that he is fully rejecting his old identity as a gang
laughs. The milkman overhears him and wishes him peace. member and embracing his true individual identity. Notably, the
milkman wishes Tsotsi peace rather than immediately reacting to
him with fear, as previous characters such as Cassim and Morris
Tshabalala have done. The milkman’s reaction suggests that Tsotsi’s
transformation is visible to others; mysteriously, he no longer looks
like a gang member. That the two characters wish each other
peace—a religious greeting—suggests that Tsotsi’s transformation is
somehow religious in nature.

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David wishes the milkman peace and begins walking when he At this point, the novel stops calling Tsotsi “Tsotsi” and starts calling
hears the noise of bulldozers. Evidently, people in the white him “David,” indicating that he has completed his transformation,
township have complained that people are reclaiming the ruins, freeing himself from the gang member stereotype and reclaiming his
so they have sent the bulldozers in to destroy them a second individual identity. That the white township has insisted on re-
time. David starts running and yelling at the bulldozers to stop. razing the ruins where David has hidden his baby, however,
A few people, hearing him, start yelling “Stop” as well. He runs indicates that the white supremacist social structure is once again
into the ruins without any of the workers seeing him. He has threatening to destroy David’s family. David dies in a Christlike, self-
just reached the baby when a bulldozer knocks down a wall on sacrificing manner trying to save the baby—which fulfills the
top of him. Shortly afterward, he is pulled out of the wreckage, foreshadowing implicit in Boston singing “Gentle Jesus, meek and
dead, but wearing a “beautiful” smile. mild” and in Isaiah’s discussion of the Crucifixion. Yet, although the
novel does not explicitly state that the baby dies, it seems likely that
the wall that killed David also crushed the baby. Thus, the novel’s
ending suggests that while religion can cause positive individual
transformations, it cannot cure structural evils like apartheid or
white supremacy. David’s “beautiful” smile after death, then, may be
a sincere sign of his redemption or an ironic comment on his
powerlessness.

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To cite any of the quotes from Tsotsi covered in the Quotes section
HOW T
TO
O CITE of this LitChart:
To cite this LitChart: MLA
MLA Fugard, Athol. Tsotsi. Grove Press. 2006.
Prendergast, Finola. "Tsotsi." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 20 May CHICA
CHICAGO
GO MANU
MANUAL
AL
2022. Web. 20 May 2022.
Fugard, Athol. Tsotsi. New York: Grove Press. 2006.
CHICA
CHICAGO
GO MANU
MANUAL
AL
Prendergast, Finola. "Tsotsi." LitCharts LLC, May 20, 2022.
Retrieved May 20, 2022. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/tsotsi.

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