Yet despite the fact that he strips away many of the most obvious elements of South African life, at the end of the book Mathabane claims he can never escape his culture or his country. "Deep within me," he states, "I knew that I could never really leave South Africa or Alexandra. I was Alexandra, I was South Africa..." (348). The question of whether this is true becomes more acute throughout the book as it becomes clearer how separate Mathabane keeps himself from other black South Africans. Yet he resents any inference that he rejected African culture and allowed white culture to shape or define him. Rather, Mathabane firmly believes that every decision he makes - and the elements of black and white culture that he accepts or rejects - are self-determined exercises of autonomy.
One of the first observations Mathabane made as a young child was how apartheid had twisted tribalism and used it as a form of oppression against Africans. At seven years old, he realized that his father's life was "controlled" by superstition. Even at that young age, Mathabane's individual consciousness was highly developed and he deliberately rejected the superstition of his parents, claiming his right to do so because "my life was my own to do with as I pleased" (102-103). When he recognized his father's slavery to the "double yoke of apartheid and tribalism" (207), he realized that African "superstition" and tribal culture were not for him. His scorn for his father lay in the fact that his father clung to values which had "outlived" their "usefulness," values which discriminated against him while he attempted to function within the white man's world (208).
Equally, Mathabane rejected Christianity, claiming it was misused by all sides. The government used it to claim that God had given whites the divine right to rule over blacks; the black churches misused it by demanding money from Africans who were already destitute; and black churches further misused it by resigning themselves to the idea that this was their "lot" in life, God's will for black men and women (36).
Go To Page: 1 2
