Morris Tshabalala Quotes in Tsotsi
[Morris] looked at the street and the big cars with their white passengers warm inside like wonderful presents in bright boxes, and the carefree, ugly crowds of the pavement, seeing them all with baleful feelings.
It is for your gold that I had to dig. That is what destroyed me. You are walking on stolen legs. All of you.
Even in this there was no satisfaction. As if knowing his thoughts, they stretched their thin, unsightly lips into bigger smiles while the crude sounds of their language and laughter seemed even louder. A few of them, after buying a newspaper, dropped pennies in front of him. He looked the other way when he pocketed them.
Are his hands soft? he would ask himself, and then shake his head in anger and desperation at the futility of the question. But no sooner did he stop asking it than another would occur. Has he got a mother? This question was persistent. Hasn’t he got a mother? Didn’t she love him? Didn’t she sing him songs? He was really asking how do men come to be what they become. For all he knew others might have asked the same question about himself. There were times when he didn’t feel human. He knew he didn’t look it.
What is sympathy? If you had asked Tsotsi this, telling him that it was his new experience, he would have answered: like light, meaning that it revealed. Pressed further, he might have thought of darkness and lighting a candle, and holding it up to find Morris Tshabalala within the halo of its radiance. He was seeing him for the first time, in a way that he hadn’t seen him before, or with a second sort of sight, or maybe just more clearly. […]
But that wasn’t all. The same light fell on the baby, and somehow on Boston too, and wasn’t that the last face of Gumboot Dhlamini there, almost where the light ended and things weren’t so clear anymore. And beyond that still, what? A sense of space, of an infinity stretching away so vast that the whole world, the crooked trees, the township streets, the crowded, wheezing rooms, might have been waiting there for a brighter, intense revelation.
I must give him something, he thought. I must give this strange and terrible night something back for all it has given me. With the instinct of his kind, he turned to beauty and gave back the most beautiful thing he knew.
‘Mothers love their children. I know. I remember. They sing us songs when we are small. I’m telling you, tsotsi. Mothers love their children.’
After this there was silence for the words to register and make their meaning, for Tsotsi to stand up and say in reply: ‘They don’t. I’m telling you, I know they don’t,’ and then he walked away.
‘Why Boston? What did do it?’
A sudden elation lit up Boston’s face; he tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his nose started throbbing, but despite the pain he whispered back at Tsotsi: ‘You are asking me about God.’
‘God.’
‘You are asking me about God, Tsotsi. About God, about God.’
To an incredible extent a peaceful existence was dependent upon knowing just when to say no or yes to the white man.
‘Come man and join in the singing.’
‘Me!’
‘I’m telling you anybody can come. It’s the House of God. I ring His bell. Will you come?’
‘Yes.’
‘Listen tonight, you hear. Listen for me. I will call you to believe in God.’
Morris Tshabalala Quotes in Tsotsi
[Morris] looked at the street and the big cars with their white passengers warm inside like wonderful presents in bright boxes, and the carefree, ugly crowds of the pavement, seeing them all with baleful feelings.
It is for your gold that I had to dig. That is what destroyed me. You are walking on stolen legs. All of you.
Even in this there was no satisfaction. As if knowing his thoughts, they stretched their thin, unsightly lips into bigger smiles while the crude sounds of their language and laughter seemed even louder. A few of them, after buying a newspaper, dropped pennies in front of him. He looked the other way when he pocketed them.
Are his hands soft? he would ask himself, and then shake his head in anger and desperation at the futility of the question. But no sooner did he stop asking it than another would occur. Has he got a mother? This question was persistent. Hasn’t he got a mother? Didn’t she love him? Didn’t she sing him songs? He was really asking how do men come to be what they become. For all he knew others might have asked the same question about himself. There were times when he didn’t feel human. He knew he didn’t look it.
What is sympathy? If you had asked Tsotsi this, telling him that it was his new experience, he would have answered: like light, meaning that it revealed. Pressed further, he might have thought of darkness and lighting a candle, and holding it up to find Morris Tshabalala within the halo of its radiance. He was seeing him for the first time, in a way that he hadn’t seen him before, or with a second sort of sight, or maybe just more clearly. […]
But that wasn’t all. The same light fell on the baby, and somehow on Boston too, and wasn’t that the last face of Gumboot Dhlamini there, almost where the light ended and things weren’t so clear anymore. And beyond that still, what? A sense of space, of an infinity stretching away so vast that the whole world, the crooked trees, the township streets, the crowded, wheezing rooms, might have been waiting there for a brighter, intense revelation.
I must give him something, he thought. I must give this strange and terrible night something back for all it has given me. With the instinct of his kind, he turned to beauty and gave back the most beautiful thing he knew.
‘Mothers love their children. I know. I remember. They sing us songs when we are small. I’m telling you, tsotsi. Mothers love their children.’
After this there was silence for the words to register and make their meaning, for Tsotsi to stand up and say in reply: ‘They don’t. I’m telling you, I know they don’t,’ and then he walked away.
‘Why Boston? What did do it?’
A sudden elation lit up Boston’s face; he tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his nose started throbbing, but despite the pain he whispered back at Tsotsi: ‘You are asking me about God.’
‘God.’
‘You are asking me about God, Tsotsi. About God, about God.’
To an incredible extent a peaceful existence was dependent upon knowing just when to say no or yes to the white man.
‘Come man and join in the singing.’
‘Me!’
‘I’m telling you anybody can come. It’s the House of God. I ring His bell. Will you come?’
‘Yes.’
‘Listen tonight, you hear. Listen for me. I will call you to believe in God.’
