An eye-opening account of the horrors faced by Mathabane and his family while he was growing up in the most desperate ghetto in South Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. Only through the encouragement and hard work of his mother and grandmother was he able to finish school and overcome the odds placed before him. Those needing graphic confirmation of the harrowing experience of growing up poor and black in apartheid South Africa will find it in Mathabane's autobiography.

posted May 24, 2006 at 1:05PM

Reading “Kaffir Boy”, Mathabane puts you into his shoes, feeling the pain and neglect of the apartheid, seeing life in South Africa living in the apartheid. The horrors of his encounters are eye-opening and alarming bringing out fear. Though his journey is more hopeful than that of many of his neighbors, he has his mother and grandmother backing him and pushing him in school so he will get the chance of a future. It also shines light into the tribal reserves held by Africans and the background of those as well as life in Alexandria, the poor small confinements, filthy surroundings, poor circumstances as well as poverty. It also gives hope that through education, the Africans were given a window of opportunity to escape from the poverty and make something of themselves, though the journey was long and treacherous troubled by danger, physical threat, and giving up.

posted May 29, 2010 at 6:36PM

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