Personal Prejudice Theme Analysis

As Mark Mathabane describes it, South African society is replete with prejudice and racism on an individual level, which both contribute to apartheid and are exacerbated by it. As an oppressed black child, Mathabane spends most of his childhood hating and fearing all white people. However, as he grows up and begins to meet “white liberals” who value him as an equal human being, Mathabane begins to realize that his own prejudices are ill-founded. Mathabane’s battle with his own personal prejudice suggests that such prejudice is based on ignorance and fear and can be counteracted by personal relationships with people who are different from oneself.

Mathabane recounts that, as a child, his entire worldview was dominated by race, suggesting that South Africa’s segregation laws create deep-seated personal prejudice between groups of people. White Afrikaners are taught in school that black people are stupid and beastly. A white child, Clyde, calls Mathabane “Kaffir”—the South African equivalent of the N-word in America—and says, “My teacher tells us that Kaffirs can’t read, speak or write English like white people because they have smaller brains […] you’re not people like us, because you belong to a jungle civilization.” Clyde’s malevolent racism shows how white prejudice toward black people is propagated by South Africa’s education system. Just as white Afrikaners are prejudiced toward black people, Mathabane and the people he grows up amongst bear similar prejudice against white people. Mathabane’s mother tells him, “To the black man and woman in the streets all whites are the same. All they know is the white man who’s making their lives hell and whom they hate so much they would kill at the first opportunity.” This prejudice is so strong that most black people despise other black people who have any association with white people, such as migrants who work in the Afrikaners’ gold mines or even Mathabane himself when he starts playing tennis with white foreigners. The black community’s hostility toward the white population suggests that an intense personal prejudice between the two groups runs in both directions, even though the structural oppression of apartheid only oppresses black people. Mathabane recalls, “My conception of the world, of life, was wholly in racial terms; and that conception was not mine alone. It was echoed by all the black people I had come across.” Mathabane’s observation suggests that alongside apartheid’s systemic injustice, personal racial prejudice also dominates South African society during this time.

However, as Mathabane grows up, he comes to realize that much of his own prejudice is based on a long-held fear of white people and ignorance of their world, suggesting that personal prejudice is often rooted in one’s fear of an unknown people or culture. Because of night raids and police violence, Mathabane and his siblings learn to fear white people from a very young age—from as young as five years old, Mathabane envisions any white person as a “bogeyman,” and contact with a white person evokes a “naked terror” in him. As a youth, Mathabane watches violent white films in the cinema about gladiators, mobsters, and soldiers, all of whom are usually killing people with swords or guns or tanks. With no other image of the white world, Mathabane comes to believe that the movies represent “the stark reality of a world I was forbidden to enter,” full of “bloody murders and savage beatings and indiscriminate shootings,” fueling his fear of white people and prejudice against them. Mathabane’s misconceptions about the white world reinforce his belief that “white people had no hearts […] they were to be feared and hated.” Although Mathabane does suffer violence from white police officers, his ignorance and fear about white people overall lead him to generalize from these experiences and believe that all white people are menacing. Mathabane’s experiences suggest that not only his but also many white people’s prejudice may be driven by ignorance and fear of people who are different as well.

As Mathabane’s junior tennis career introduces him to a variety of white people, he begins to realize that not all white people are equally prejudiced, showing how exposure to people who are different can help one to see other people as individuals, rather than as a monolithic group. As Mathabane rises to prominence in South Africa’s tennis scene, white expatriates (non-Afrikaners living in South Africa) invite him to play at their tennis clubs so he can train against more talented athletes. Through this avenue, Mathabane meets white people like the German Wilfred, who hates the Afrikaners’ racism and encourages Mathabane to tell white people about his suffering under apartheid, and who gives Mathabane clothing and tennis equipment he wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. One of Mathabane’s most significant relationships is with Stan and Marjory, wealthy white Americans who meet Mathabane during a tennis tournament in South Africa and immediately befriend him, eventually sponsoring his tennis career with thousands of dollars. In the first day that Mathabane spends with them, he realizes, “Stan and Marjory treated me as an equal, a human being […] treating me as if we had known each other for years, as if we were brothers and sisters.” Their friendship helps him to realize that some white people are friendly, generous, and loving, rather than prejudiced. Mathabane’s relationships with kind-hearted, unprejudiced white people challenge his old beliefs that all white people are heartless, ruthless, and selfish. He realizes that “whites were not monolithic, not all racists to be hated and destroyed,” suggesting that his exposure to white people helps him to see them as individuals, rather than as a single, unified, evil group. However, this sets Mathabane at odds with the majority of his black friends, who still believe that “no [good] white man exists in South Africa.”

While both structural racism and individual prejudice remain powerful in Mathabane’s story, the changes in his perspective over time suggest that relationships with people who are different from oneself are critical to deconstructing prejudice between groups.