Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Children! My Africa!, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Protest, Dissent, and Violence
Apartheid, Race, and Human Connection
Education
The Future of Africa
Summary
Analysis
Standing alone in his classroom, Mr. M vigorously rings the school bell and calls for the children to go to school, “before they kill you.” He reads the names off his class register, including Thami’s, and asks himself if each of his students is still alive. He wonders what he can still teach them: his lessons were designed to prepare them for the world of the living, not the dead. He fears that his “wonderful words” will prove totally useless.
By ringing his school bell and calling out to his students, Mr. M desperately tries to replicate the sense of order and safety that he used to feel while teaching. He feels that he has failed in his mission to protect his students, and this leads him to question whether his lifelong faith in “wonderful words”—or learning and persuasion as a means to political change—has been misplaced.
Themes
Suddenly, stones break through the classroom window. Distraught, Mr. M concludes that one of his students must be alive. He rings his bell and yells out for them to “come to school!” Then, Thami enters. He tells Mr. M not to ring his bell—the Comrades see it as a provocation, because Mr. M is going against the boycott. But Mr. M says that he’ll maintain the school schedule and keep ringing the bell every day, until the world “come[s] to its senses.” Mr. M asks if Thami is at school to learn, but when Thami says no, Mr. M remarks that there’s not much revolutionaries could benefit from learning in school.
Thami tries to intervene and stop Mr. M’s breakdown. As a result of the riots, Thami and Mr. M’s roles are reversed: Mr. M tries but fails to maintain his position of authority, and Thami ends up becoming responsibility for his teacher’s safety. This shows that, despite all their conflicts in the past, Thami still cares deeply about Mr. M’s well-being. In fact, Thami and Mr. M’s ability to care for each other despite their disagreements suggests that it’s possible to heal deep political divides, like the one that separates Black and white South Africans.
Themes
Mr. M holds a stone in one hand and his dictionary in the other. He declares that the stone is merely one word, whereas the dictionary contains the entire English language, which the great writers Thami and Isabel were studying dedicated their lives to exploring. The dictionary is one of Mr. M’s oldest books, and he tries to give it to Thami, who refuses and explains that he’s coming as a warning. But Mr. M says that he knows and Thami is wasting his time.
The stone represents physical force, while the dictionary represents the power of language to incite change. While the rioters choose to attack the apartheid government with violence, Mr. M argues, persuasion is a far more effective and wide-ranging tool, and education is a never-ending and inherently fulfilling pursuit. By refusing the dictionary, however, Thami demonstrates that he has firmly chosen the rioters’ side.
Themes
Thami explains that he’s not just warning Mr. M about ringing the school bell: rather, the townspeople have reported that he’s a police informant, and he’s in imminent danger. The people are planning to burn down the school and kill Mr. M. The only way Mr. M can survive is by publicly apologizing, renouncing his association with the school, and joining the boycott movement. Thami says that he can vouch for Mr. M’s innocence, and the people will believe him. But Mr. M isn’t so sure: he doesn’t think it’s possible to reason with an angry mob.
Regardless of whether the rumor about Mr. M being a police informant is true, the community now sees him as an enemy—even though he dedicated his whole life to protecting that same community. By offering to help Mr. M, Thami shows that he understands and appreciates his teacher’s noble intentions. But despite these intentions, Mr. M now has to choose between loyalty to his principles and loyalty to the neighborhood’s people.
Themes
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Mr. M asks Thami why he’s trying to save him, but Thami avoids eye contact and says that the rebels will lose credibility if they harm innocent people. Mr. M apologizes for thinking that Thami wanted to save his teacher. Then, he confesses that his execution wouldn’t hurt the cause, because he’s guilty: he did go to the police and report the people he thought were responsible for the unrest. He declares that he felt a sense of duty to help stop the lawless unrest—or maybe, he admits, he really just felt lonely and aimless without Thami and was jealous of the Comrades for winning him over. But now he can see that Thami will never forgive him.
Mr. M presents two alternative explanations for his behavior: first, he might have gone to the police in order to remain consistent with his moral principles, and secondly, he might have simply done it out of pain and jealousy.In fact, these two explanations correspond to Thami and Mr. M’s differing views of politics: as a game of power and as a game of principles, respectively. Mr. M might have reported the protest leaders to the police because of an idea (his moral principles), or he might have done so as a way to gain vengeance and enact control (power).
Themes
Mr. M declares that he would sell his soul for one more lesson with his students, because he dedicated his entire life to teaching. He remembers the moment he started dreaming of it: when he was 10 years old on a school trip, he got out of a bus to take a bathroom break on top of Wapadsberg Pass in the mountains. He looked out over the vast Karoo desert and was captivated by its beauty. Ten-year-old Mr. M asked his teacher what he’d find if he walked endlessly North toward the horizon, and the teacher said he would encounter all the rivers, mountain ranges, and peoples of Africa. He asked the teacher he’d seen them all, but the teacher replied that he knew about them from books.
Mr. M’s story from his childhood bears a remarkable resemblance to Thami and Isabel’s political awakenings. Namely, all three are inspired by learning something new about the world around them. Just as Mr. M learns about Africa from his teacher, Isabel learns about apartheid by visiting Brakwater, and Thami learns about the anti-apartheid movement from people in his neighborhood. In all three cases, learning inspires people when it’s relevant to their lives and communities. This is why Mr. M believed in the value of education, but during the anti-apartheid movement, his students were learning far more in the streets than in school.
Themes
Over the years, Mr. M has also learned all about Africa through books. When he’s feeling down, he imagines traversing the whole beautiful continent, starting from Wapadsberg Pass. This exercise always made him proud to be African—until something he recently saw on television changed his mind. The news showed a starving Ethiopian man carrying his child’s body to a mass grave. Mr. M was furious that the report didn’t name the man or the child. He thinks that the man and child represent all Africans, whose lives and potential the world plans to just waste. He exclaims, “my children…my Africa,” then reaches out for Thami and says, “My beautiful and proud young Africa!”
Mr. M also ties the view from Wapadsberg Pass to his sense of pride as an African person. Namely, he sees Africa as unified in its beauty, potential, and brutal experiences under European colonialism. Like the students who are forced to give up on their dreams, the Ethiopian man ends up nameless and insignificant simply because of the place he was born. The news report further dehumanizes the man by failing to even name him. By reaching out to Thami, Mr. M indicates that he does not want his star student to fall into the same insignificance and irrelevance. He remains hopeful for Thami’s—and Africa’s—future, even if the past gives him little reason to be optimistic.
Themes
More stones break through the classroom’s window: a mob has assembled outside. Mr. M tries to leave, but Thami doesn’t let him. He says that he’ll go tell the mob that Mr. M is innocent, but Mr. M asks why he wants to lie—is it just for his “Cause”? Thami says yes, and Mr. M replies he doesn’t need to hide from the truth. He knows he will die, but he he’s not afraid. He starts to ring his school bell as he runs outside, where the mob kills him.
In the play’s climax, Mr. M rejects Thami’s offer of help and willingly faces his own death, whether for the sake of his moral principles or out of rage and despair. On one hand, it’s possible that he is not willing to compromise his belief in nonviolence and faith in education in order to cooperate with the mob. On the other, it’s also possible that he cannot stand to see Thami and his other students choose the mob over him. As with all the other political actions in this play, the audience must choose between these two competing explanations: principles and power.
Themes
