Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tsotsi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Apartheid and Racism
Parents and Children
Identity and Memory
Hatred, Sympathy, and God
Habit vs. Choice
Summary
Analysis
By “city,” Tsotsi means Terminal Place, a street junction near the gasworks where people shop from stores and carts. At Terminal Place, the buses make journeys between the city and the townships. Terminal Place becomes active in the morning, when workers start taking buses. By dawn, commercial activity starts. Activity dies down by nightfall, because “night is never safe.” Tsotsi arrives at Terminal Place in the evening on a bus. He leaves without Butcher or Die Aap 15 minutes after he arrives, having found a prospective target.
People have to take buses between the city and the townships because of racist apartheid laws: non-white people are allowed to work for white people in the city if they have the required pass, but they are not allowed to live in “white” areas due to apartheid’s segregation laws. So, people have to pay to commute from the non-white townships. The reminder that “night is never safe,” meanwhile, suggests that poverty and oppression under apartheid have increased crime and made the areas near the townships dangerous.
Themes
The target is Morris Tshabalala, who still considers himself a man despite losing his legs in an accident and lacking hope. When a foot steps on Morris’s hand, he cries out, “Whelp of a yellow bitch!”—in other words, puppy of a female yellow dog. He cries out not because of the pain but because he dislikes 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 Tshabalala curses Tsotsi by calling him the “whelp of a yellow bitch”—literally, Morris is saying that Tsotsi is the puppy of a female yellow dog. Thus Morris’s curse mysteriously associates the yellow dog Tsotsi has begun to remember with Tsotsi’s mother, whom he can’t remember.
Themes
Morris doesn’t move away from Tsotsi because he is afraid. Morris doesn’t consider anything fear that fails to measure up to the “terror” of the mining collapse he experienced. The mine was a dark world where time was measured differently and men sang about their estrangement from the sun, the moon, and their wives. When the shaft collapsed, the workers panicked. Morris Tshabalala’s legs were crushed under a beam. Wondering whether he is getting old, Morris calls Tsotsi a “Tsotsi shit” and a “yellow bitch shit.”
South Africa contains a number of gold mines. Before and during apartheid, Black men did the dangerous work of mining the gold for little pay while white men reaped the major profits. This economic structure led to Morris losing his legs—which shows how racist structures like apartheid seriously harm people, even when no one individual is intending the harm. When Morris calls Tsotsi a “tsotsi,” meanwhile, it reminds the reader that Tsotsi has not only embraced this stereotyped identity in the past—other people also impose it on him.
Themes
Crowds impede Morris’s progress as he drags himself toward his usual eating house. He is happy when he reaches an empty street and feels the warmth that the “paving stones” have absorbed from the sun. He thinks how he likes warmth because his legs were cold during the accident, so “cold is the touch of 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.
In contrast with Tsotsi, Morris has clear memories of his past and acts in response to them, which shows how memory shapes present behavior and identity. For example, because of how cold he felt during his accident, Morris associates cold with “the touch of death,” loves being warm, and seeks out warmth.
Themes
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Morris stops to check his hands and looks behind him. He sees a man sitting by a store and, beyond him, the dwindling crowds. Morris, starting to move again, wonders why he continues living and what he has to live for. He stops to rest. It’s getting dark. Morris sees the same man sitting by a different store, closer by. He notices it’s the man who stepped on his hand earlier—that is, Tsotsi. Morris, heading back toward the crowds, thinks that he was correct in hating money because Tsotsi may kill him for it.
When Morris wonders what he has to live for, it shows how the profoundly apartheid economic structures that led to his mining accident have harmed him. That he hates money, meanwhile, suggests he knows that white greed for money led to his accident—which in turn shows that Morris, unlike Tsotsi, is consciously aware of how white supremacy and apartheid have shaped his life.
Themes
Morris wonders how he could survive without money. He recalls begging an old woman who called him “John my poor boy” and “Johnny poor boy” to employ him as her gardener. Instead, she gave him a penny and shut the door on him. Morris threw out the penny and kept seeking employment. People dropped change to him in the street, and he threw it out, until one day he was too exhausted. Although he hated the money, which he hadn’t earned, he couldn’t throw out the amount he had been given without drawing notice.
Although the novel does not explicitly state the race of the old woman who refused to employ Morris, she called him “boy” although he was a grown man, which implies that she was white and engaged in condescending interpersonal racism. That people kept giving Morris charity when he wanted work suggests a mismatch between how he identified himself and how other people identified him: he identified as a worker, but because he was disabled, other people stereotyped him as a beggar and failed to treat him with dignity.
Themes
After that day, Morris began begging. He learned begging spots and tricks until he could obtain enough money for food, but his pride never recovered. After six years of begging, he’s become bitter. He yells at people to “go to hell,” but they don’t hear him.
This passage illustrates how people internalize and come to identify with the stereotypes, like “beggar” or “tsotsi,” that other people impose on them.
Themes
In the present, Morris approaches a newspaper salesman who sells to white people. By the salesman’s stand, Morris looks through the crowd for Tsotsi but can’t see him. The salesman tells Morris that “they” have “shot a hole in the moon.” Watching the salesman’s customers, Morris thinks that if he were a real man he would have killed Tsotsi, and that he lost his legs for these crowds to have gold. “It is for your gold I had to dig. That is what destroyed me. You are walking on stolen legs.” He looks with contempt at the customers’ “thin, unsightly lips” and thinks their language “crude.” Some drop change for him. When he takes the money, he doesn’t look at it.
The salesman’s claim that some unidentified “they” have “shot a hole in the moon” may be an allusion to the first time a rocket—the USSR’s Luna 2—landed on the moon, in which case the novel is set in late 1959. Morris’s claim that the salesman’s white customers are “walking on stolen legs” makes clear that he knows white supremacist economic systems led to his crippling accident. This knowledge leads him to feel contempt for stereotypically white facial features (“thin, unsightly lips”) and the language the white South Africans speak (probably Afrikaans). That Morris is aware of how apartheid has harmed him, while Tsotsi is not, suggests that individual memory is necessary to correctly diagnose social problems.
Themes
Morris catches sight of Tsotsi watching him and curses. He resolves that despite being crippled, he is man enough to face down Tsotsi. Morris starts moving. The salesman calls after him about a penny he’s left behind, but Morris ignores him. Then the salesman throws the penny at Morris, but Morris doesn’t 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.
Under apartheid law, Black people were required to carry passes and could be arrested if they didn’t have one. Given Morris’s awareness of apartheid’s evils, it is ironic that he’s hoping a white policeman enforcing apartheid laws will stop Tsotsi and thereby save Morris from him.
Themes
Watching Tsotsi, Morris wonders whether his hands are “soft,” whether he has a mother, and what his relationship with her was like. But he’s “really asking how do men come to be what they become.” He considers that other people might think about him the way he’s thinking about Tsotsi.
Morris shows his ability to sympathize with Tsotsi, despite the threat Tsotsi poses to him, when he wonders about Tsotsi’s hands and realizes that other people may see him the way he sees Tsotsi. When Morris wonders about Tsotsi’s mother, and the novel 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.
Themes
Morris reaches a dark side street that leads to a restaurant. He’s tired and worried Tsotsi will kill him if he goes down the dark street. Morris considers leaving his money somewhere visible. Then a car stalls nearby. Two men get out to push it, while women stay inside the car and laugh at them. The two men sit on the bumper and smoke a cigarette. One of them 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.
In South Africa, the word “kaffir” is an anti-Black racial slur. That even white people who seem to be sympathizing with Morris casually call him this slur suggests how deeply ingrained anti-Black racism was in apartheid South African society. Morris’s clever use of the stalled car to elude Tsotsi, meanwhile, shows how much he wants to live despite the harms that apartheid has inflicted on him.
Themes
Morris orders soup and bread at the Bantu Eating House. The owner, who usually banters with Morris, is too exhausted today. The eating house is poor, the food cheap. On the walls are only an advertisement for “lotion for straightening curly hair” and a sign in Shangaan saying the restaurant won’t take credit.
“Bantu” is a large, internally diverse group of African peoples who speak the same family of languages. In South Africa, “Shangaan” refers to a particular Bantu tribe. The restaurant’s name, “Bantu Eating House,” suggests that it serves African food, while the sign in 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.
Themes
Morris eats, orders more food, and checks the street for Tsotsi. Although he sees people who look like Tsotsi, he doesn’t see the man himself. He orders some coffee and, drinking it, admits internally that he was frightened. He realizes he wants to live.
Morris’s self-reflection about his desire to live contrasts with Tsotsi’s relative lack of self-reflection—another detail betraying how important memory is to understanding oneself and one’s identity.
Themes
A voice tells Morris that he didn’t hear him. It’s the newspaper salesman, giving Morris back the penny Morris left behind. The salesman lectures Morris briefly on the value of a penny, telling him people will commit murder over a penny. Morris takes the penny and tells the salesman about Tsotsi following him. The salesman calls people like Tsotsi “mad dogs” who “bite their own people,” and Morris says that if he were a real man, he would have killed Tsotsi. The salesman says that then the authorities would have executed Morris. Morris asks what a man is supposed to do. The salesman replies that he should go home, thank God, and deny responsibility. He leaves.
By comparing Tsotsi to a dog, the salesman reminds the reader of the mysterious connection between the yellow dog and Tsotsi’s mother. Meanwhile, by saying that men like Tsotsi “bite their own people,” the salesman is suggesting that apartheid not only harms Black South Africans by depriving them of economic opportunity, but also encourages them to harm each other by making violent crime one of their only opportunities to earn money. Finally, by urging Morris to go home and thank God, the salesman seems to suggest that religion is not a powerful force in people’s lives but rather a consolation they indulge in when they are powerless to act.
Themes
Morris drinks his coffee and checks the street but doesn’t see Tsotsi. The restaurant owner tells Morris he’s closing. Though afraid, Morris decides to go home—that is, to the abandoned hut where he squats. On the way, he realizes Tsotsi is following him. Morris’s hands are bleeding, and he is holding back tears. He raises his money high so Tsotsi can see it and leaves it under a streetlamp. Pausing at the next streetlamp, Morris sees Tsotsi kick the money.
In this chapter, the novel has been giving the reader Morris’s perspective on his interactions with Tsotsi while withholding Tsotsi’s perspective. When Tsotsi kicks Morris’s money, it’s another break with Tsotsi’s habits—the last time Tsotsi’s gang murdered a man, Gumboot Dhlamini, they also took his money. Thus the novel is foreshadowing a potential change in Tsotsi’s character while withholding from the reader exactly what it is.
Themes
Tsotsi continues pursuing Morris, who throws stones at him. Although Morris throws hard, he doesn’t hit Tsotsi. Tsotsi vanishes from Morris’s sight, and Morris begins swearing. He enters the darkness and anticipates this is “the moment and the place for which the young one had waited so patiently the whole night.”
Morris believes that he has entered “the place for which the young one had waited so patiently the whole night”—in other words, that Tsotsi is going to act according to his stereotyped “gangster” identity and kill Morris now that they’re alone in a dark place. Yet the reader knows that Tsotsi has already broken with his old “gangster” habits 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.
Themes
