Apartheid, Race, and Human Connection Theme Analysis

In My Children! My Africa!, Athol Fugard shows how the apartheid regime reserved wealth and power for white people by dividing South African society along a racial line and ruthlessly exploiting the Black majority. But the racial divide also serves another purpose: it geographically, socially, and politically separates groups of people from one another, in order to try and prevent white people from recognizing non-white people’s humanity and fighting for social equality. Nevertheless, the play suggests that this attempt will always fail. Thami, Isabel, and Mr. M form powerful connections across divisions of race, class, and gender, even if apartheid ultimately wrenches them apart. Through these protagonists’ relationships, the play shows that no political system can ever crush people’s fundamental humanity—their capacity to see one another as equals and fight for a society based on this equality.

When Isabel visits the township of Brakwater and realizes for the first time that white and Black people are actually her equals, she learns that South African society is divided by design, not by nature. The town where Isabel and Thami live is sharply divided: on the white side of town, Isabel lives comfortably in a large house, attends a well-funded private girls’ school, and dreams of becoming a journalist. Meanwhile, Thami lives in a slum full of metal shacks, studies in a bare concrete classroom, and has no job prospects besides working as a servant for white people. Black people cannot cross to the white side of town, and white people almost never visit the township. This racial divide materially benefits white people, and it also prevents them from forming true relationships with Black people. However, Isabel does cross the racial divide when she participates in an inter-school debate with Thami. She initially thinks of her trip to the township as a “‘pioneering’ mission” to help educate intellectually inferior Black people. But during the debate, Isabel quickly realizes that white people and Black people are equals in every way: her opponent, Thami (who’s black), is just as intelligent, persuasive, witty, knowledgeable, and empathetic as she is. Thus, Isabel starts to question why white and Black people live in such obviously unequal conditions, if they are so obviously equal.

Isabel’s budding friendships with Thami and Mr. M show that oppressive social arrangements like apartheid can never fully blind people to one another’s humanity. Isabel and Thami build a good-humored friendship by sharing details about their lives, cracking jokes together, and teaming up for a literature quiz competition. Although they recognize that Black and white students are not supposed to be friends, their curiosity about each other’s lives, families, and hopes for the future brings them together. But when they eventually start talking about politics, Isabel realizes that her community is responsible for creating the profoundly unequal world that prevents Black people like Thami from realizing their full potential. Isabel and Thami’s friendship shows Isabel that her community has lied to her by teaching her that Black people are inferior and don’t deserve political equality. Similarly, Mr. M and Isabel also bond because they both love learning and care deeply about Thami. Mr. M tells Isabel she’s part of his “extended family” of students, and when Isabel explains that she has gained a totally new perspective on Black people (and on South Africa as a whole) by visiting Brakwater, Mr. M enthusiastically proclaims that “knowledge has banished fear.” This line sums up Isabel’s political awakening: the apartheid system is designed to make her fear Black people by preventing her from ever actually knowing them. But once she meets Thami and Mr. M, she sheds her fear and realizes that Black and white people are equal.

Apartheid brings Isabel, Thami, and Mr. M together, but it also breaks them apart. Through their fate, the play shows the inhumane brutality of the apartheid system—or any other system of social control that forcibly separates people into classes of superiors and inferiors. For example, the political situation cruelly breaks apart Thami and Isabel’s friendship. The Comrades, the group organizing the community protest, has decided to boycott the school and prohibit mixing with white people. Therefore, Thami has to quit the literature competition and stop seeing Isabel altogether. Isabel is devastated to hear this, although she doesn’t blame Thami: they both agree that they want to remain friends, but they understand that political tensions make it impossible. Similarly, politics also forces Thami and Mr. M apart, even though they never stop loving one another. They clash more and more throughout the play, as Thami decides to join the community revolt that Mr. M condemns. At the play’s climax, they meet in the schoolroom and both realize that their loyalties to their respective values—Thami to the community and Mr. M to the value of education—are stronger than their loyalties to one another. These would not usually have to be in conflict, but because of apartheid, both men are forced to choose between their relationships and their values. After the community learns that Mr. M reported the protest leaders to the police, an angry mob kills him, and then Thami and Isabel secretly meet one last time to mourn him. Isabel is devastated: she cannot understand why Brakwater’s people killed their schoolteacher. Meanwhile, Thami admits that he always loved Mr. M and regrets not telling him this during their final meeting. Both Isabel and Thami recognize that politics tore them apart from Mr. M—they still recognize his essential goodness as a person, and this recognition inspires them to live meaningful lives in the future.

Taken as individuals, Isabel, Thami, and Mr. M all have noble intentions: they want to help each other, their communities, and their country become more equitable and just. Their friendship proves that apartheid can keep people apart but never erase their humanity. This system may convince many people to accept social divisions as right or natural, but it can never destroy the basic human curiosity that brings people together in service of ideals of community and equality.