African gangsters, often involved with organized crime.
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Tsotsis Term Timeline in Kaffir Boy
The timeline below shows where the term Tsotsis appears in Kaffir Boy. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4
...monotonous course.” People like Mathabane’s parents work all week and struggle to survive. On payday, tsotsis (gangsters) come to extort some of their money. Over the weekends, black people in Alexandra...
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Chapter 8
...Alexandra with a “gang” of boys between six and eight years old. They admire the tsotsis in their sharp suits and shiny shoes, and sometimes hunt for empty beer bottles to...
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Chapter 21
...remarks that she wishes she’d hauled her own son to school; instead he became a tsotsi. Now he’s dead.
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Chapter 27
...year, Mathabane witnesses a murder. As he is walking home one afternoon, he sees six tsotsis chasing two unarmed men. At the sight of gangsters, Mathabane quickly hides himself in some...
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One of the men escapes, but the tsotsis corner the other in a yard and begin “carving” him with knives, machetes, and tomahawks,...
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Chapter 38
...gets off the train and starts walking to the clinic, he sees a gang of tsotsis robbing and murdering a man “in broad daylight,” so he backtracks and takes a longer...
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