Mother to Mother

"To people like your daughter, doing good in this world is an all-consuming, fierce and burning compulsion. I wonder if it does not blinker their perception."

Magona most commonly associates blindness with the South African government and other forces working to keep apartheid in place. Interestingly, however, she suggests here that the murdered American student suffered from a kind of "blindness" as well, in the sense that—though well-intentioned—she failed to appreciate the depth of black South Africans' anger. In describing the student's desire to do good as "fierce and burning," Magona links her naiveté to another recurring motif in the novel—fire—and suggests that it can have destructive consequences.

"For the years [Mxolisi] has lived, hasn't he learned anything at all? Did he not know they would surely crucify him for killing a white person?"

Although it's not uncommon to hear the word "crucify" in a casual and figurative sense, Magona's use of it has more direct Christian parallels. Both Mxolisi's "virgin birth" and his name ("he who would bring peace") imply that he is in some sense a Christ figure, if an unconventional one. As much as the murdered student, Mxolisi is a figure who pays for the mistakes of his ancestors, and in doing so (perhaps) secures a better future for his people; late in the novel, Mandisa expresses her hope that the "churches and other groups working with young people" may ultimately be able to stop the cycle of racial violence (201). The reference to crucifixion in the above passage anticipates these later events.