Kaffir Boy Sparknotes

Lindsey Parker Parker 1
Mrs. Brawner
Honors English II
August 12, 2014
Overcoming Poverty to Rise to the Top Mark Mathabane touched the hearts of millions by telling his true, unaltered, raw experiences of living and coming to age in the apartheid in South Africa in his award winning autobiography, Kaffir Boy. Mark grew up in poverty and the cruelty that was ever present in the streets of South African ghettos, especially the most desperate and poor of them all in Alexandra, where gangs would fight and recruit and where police raids were like a normal every day routine. Mark faced life in a different light than most people do in this day and age. Mark is a very rounded and dynamic character who fluctuates throughout the book. The black people of South Africa in the apartheid viewed whites as “supreme” because they held all authority and regulated every move they made, but Mark decided to try and overcome this “supremacy” by deciding to make a better life for himself. In the book Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane there are many obstacles that Mark, the protagonist and main character, as
When an international tournament came to South Africa, Mark was encouraged to play in it as a native African player to show the rest of the world that progress was being made with the Apartheid laws that separated the native Africans from the white South Africans. This was not true at all, it was a cover up for the fact that the native Africans were only being allowed to participate in selected tournaments as examples, and since this was not fair to the native Africans they decided to boycott