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Mother to Mother Study Guide

Brief Biography of Sindiwe Magona

Sindiwe Magona was born in Umtata, a town in eastern South Africa, and grew up in Guguletu, a township outside of Cape Town. She attended primary school in Guguletu, but finished high school through a correspondence course. She then received a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Africa, and in 1981 moved to New York to work on a master’s degree in Social Work. In between, she did domestic work and worked as a schoolteacher. After receiving her master’s degree, Magona worked for the United Nations, first working in radio and then in the Public Information department until retiring to Cape Town, her home, in 2003. Magona wrote throughout her life, spending her earlier years writing autobiographical prose, short stories, and novels, and beginning to explore children’s literature in her retirement.

Historical Context of Mother to Mother

Portuguese traders first began to explore the coastline of South Africa in the 1400s, but Europeans didn’t begin to colonize the area until 1600s, when the Dutch East India Company created permanent settlements at what is now Cape Town. The settlements were a port to help passing ships on their way to Asia, but colonization expanded as greater infrastructure was required to serve said ships. Over time, the colony expanded along the coast and inland, with white colonists killing and enslaving (or forcing into indentured servitude) black Africans as they encountered them. Eventually British settlers also arrived, initially only interested in the Cape as a strategic port, but eventually going to war against Boers (or Dutch South Africans), officially taking control of South Africa in 1909. As long as white Europeans had been in South Africa, black Africans were forced to endure racism and discrimination. This was formally written into law in the mid 1880s, and further formalized in 1948—the beginning of the fifty year apartheid which denied civil and human rights to all black South Africans.

Summary

Mother to Mother weaves back and forth in time, covering the narrator, Mandisa’s life from her early childhood, through the birth of her children, through her son, Mxolisi’s murder of the Girl, a white American driving through their township of Guguletu. This is interspersed with The Girl, Mandisa, and Mxolisi’s experiences on the day of the murder, and the morning after.

The novel also includes interludes in which Mandisa addresses the Mother of the Girl, asking rhetorical questions about the Girl’s life and upbringing, expressing her grief for the Girl’s death, and attempting to explain—but not justify— Mxolisi’s actions.

Chronologically, the novel begins with Mandisa’s childhood. She and her brother, Khaya, were raised in Blouvlei, but were forced to relocate to Guguletu by the South African government. This derailed the educations of many students, although Mandisa and Khaya were able to remain in school for a while, at least until Khaya impregnated his girlfriend, Nono, and Mandisa became accidentally pregnant through non-penetrative sex with her boyfriend, China. Mama, Mandisa’s mother, is furious with her daughter, feeling that her pregnancy will embarrass the whole family, but eventually comes to love Mandisa and her newborn son. Mandisa’s parents force her to marry China, who is no longer interested in her romantically, and the two lived together unhappily for two years, until one day China runs away and disappears forever. Mandisa then moves into a hokkie of her own and does her best to raise Mxolisi, eventually having another child, Lunga, with a man named Lungile, and finally marrying a man, Dwadwa, with whom she has her youngest child and only daughter, Siziwe.

Mandisa recounts Mxolisi’s childhood. A talkative precocious boy, he stops talking for several years after witnessing the death of two older boys, Zazi and Mzamo. He regains his speech, but during his silence Mandisa realizes the resentment she feels for him, for interrupting her life with an unplanned pregnancy, and dramatically changing the course of her future.

As Mxolisi gets older he becomes involved in youth political movements, like the Young Lions. Increasingly radicalized and violent, this group burns cars, buildings, and even kills black South Africans around their township. On the day of the tragedy, Amy is driving some of her black South African friends home from their university, when Mxolisi and others spot her in her car. A group of men converge, chasing her from the car, but Mxolisi is the man to stab Page 2

and kill her. Mandisa discovers this later, spending the first night after the murder anxiously wondering if her son, who has not returned home, was somehow involved. A late night police raid of Mandisa’s house furthers her suspicions. In the morning, Reverend Mananga stops by and gives Mandisa vague instructions for how to see her son. She follows them and is briefly reunited with Mxolisi, whom she comforts and who comforts her, before he (presumably though not explicitly) turns himself in to the police.

Chapter 1

Summary

Mandisa begins with an address to the Mother of the Girl. She acknowledges her son, Mxolisi, killed the Mother’s daughter. Mandisa explains that, since the murder, her community has been blaming her for her son’s actions, but she argues that she has never had any control over him.

Mandisa continues that she isn’t shocked Mxolisi killed the Girl. Nothing about her son shocks her anymore, she explains, ever since his accidental conception, which

“unreasonably and totally destroy[ed] the me that I was

[…] the me I would have become.” Additionally, she was well aware that Mxolisi, or one of his friends, could easily kill someone at any time.

Mandisa asks the Mother why the Girl was in Guguletu, where it is unsafe for white people. She believes that the Girl was naïve in her commitment to helping others— that “people like your daughter […] so believe in their goodness, know they have hurt no one, are, indeed, helping, they never think anyone would want to hurt them.” Mandisa suspects that if Mxolisi had killed one of the black women who were accompanying the Girl, there would have been no public outcry, no police

involvement, and he likely would’ve walked free.

Mandisa argues that the Girl “has paid for the sins of the fathers and mothers who did not do their share of seeing that” Mxolisi lived a good life. Now that he’s in jail, he has access to amenities he never had as a free man. She wonders, why is Mxolisi “living a better life, if chained?” Analysis

Right away, the novel introduces the idea that family can be burdensome. Mandisa’s community sees children as extensions of their parents, and thus Mxolisi’s crime is essentially Mandisa’s, too, which is a line of reasoning that Mandisa finds unfair.

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Mandisa depicts her son as a force of nature that is so powerful and strong-willed, even his conception was out of Mandisa’s control. The story will later reveal that Mandisa got pregnant despite carefully avoiding

penetrative sex, and thus goes on to believe that her son took her virginity in a way. She gestures to that here by explaining how Mxolisi’s accidental conception

“unreasonably and totally destroy[ed]” her and her bright future. By depicting her son as this powerful, imposing force, Mandisa suggests that she couldn’t possibly control him, and thus she shouldn’t be blamed for his actions.

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Mother to Mother is based on the real-life murder of a young white woman named Amy Biehl—a kind-hearted,

altruistic Fulbright scholar who was in South Africa to help residents get ready for their first-ever democratic elections—in the impoverished black township of

Guguletu. The novel never expressly states that the Girl and Amy Biehl are one and the same, but the way that Mandisa pieces together the Girl’s life and murder largely echoes Biehl’s life—and its sudden end.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Mandisa once again argues that she shouldn’t be

responsible for Mxolisi’s crime. Instead, she points to

“the fathers and mothers who did not do their share” of ensuring that Mxolisi could live a good and meaningful life. Mandisa is likely referring to white settlers here, suggesting that colonizers (who eventually became

governors, then other politicians, then law enforcement officers) are like cruel, adoptive “fathers and mothers” of South Africa who care little for their “children,” only providing them with basic necessities within the confines of a government-funded prison.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

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Mandisa ends her address with a plea to God. She says she is “a mother, with a mother’s heart,” and she is overwhelmed with shame, and the hurt of the Mother. She asks God to forgive Mxolisi for his sin.

Mandisa and the Mother are both bound by loss and

grief, and Mandisa attempts to connect with the Mother over their shared sorrow. Mandisa’s emotional appeal in this passage speaks to the novel’s interest in the way that storytelling and language—here in the form of a personal letter—can bring people together through shared

experiences and histories.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Chapter 2

Summary

Mandisa imagines the Girl’s last morning alive. The Girl wakes up; answers a phone call; takes a shower; and has cereal, coffee, and a slice of toast for breakfast. She gets dressed, gets in her car, and drives to the university at 7:55 a.m.

At the exact same time, miles away in Guguletu, Mandisa leaves her home. Before she leaves, she wakes her

children. The younger two, Siziwe and Lunga, meet her in the kitchen for coffee and bread. Mxolisi, her oldest son, eventually joins them, complaining there isn’t enough food to eat, but his mother insists there’s bread and fruit, even if they can’t have protein like eggs or fish. Mandisa prepares to leave, reminding her children of chores they should do and what food they need to save for later. She acknowledges she doesn’t actually expect them to follow her rules, and doesn’t even remember them herself come evening, but she feels its her duty as a mother “to have authority over my children.”

Although it is a school day, Mandisa knows her children will not be going to school. For Mandisa, this is

“burdensome knowledge” that “weighs [her] spirit

down,” but she cannot do anything about it.

Analysis

Mandisa begins retroactively piecing together the story of the Girl’s life. In describing the Girl’s normal, mundane morning, Mandisa implies that South Africa is so unstable that violence can bubble up out of seemingly nowhere, punctuating an otherwise normal day with bloodshed, loss, and grief.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

The fact that the family doesn’t have access to eggs or fish begins to paint a fuller picture of their poverty. This also hints at the poverty that affects black South Africans more generally under apartheid, a social and political system of institutionalized racism that the South African government adopted in 1948 and maintained until 1994, the year after the real-life murder of Amy Biehl and the fictional murder of the Girl.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Although Mandisa claimed at the beginning of the novel that Mxolisi’s actions should not be her fault, her slightly younger self is adamant that she must “have authority over [her] children.” Before Mxolisi murders the Girl, Mandisa appears to bend to the community’s

expectations and traditions surrounding parenthood. However, it’s clear that Mandisa is merely performing the part of the authoritative parent, as she knows that her children won’t actually follow her rules.

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Mandisa seems increasingly helpless when it comes to guiding her children, as she can’t get them to go to school. The government can’t (or won’t) either; under apartheid, education is compulsory for white children, but not for black children. As Mandisa will later reveal in greater detail, knowing that her children aren’t going to school is particularly “burdensome” because she deeply values education but couldn’t finish out her own

schooling due to her unplanned pregnancy. She also knows that it is one of the few ways in which a black South African can escape poverty, so it “weighs [her] spirit down” to know that her children won’t have that chance at a better life.

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Two days earlier, COSAS ordered school children to join Operation Barcelona ostensibly in support of striking teachers. This involves children skipping school to “burn cars and […] drive reactionary elements out of town.” Although the students are calling for the government to improve their education, Mandisa remarks “these big- mouthed children don’t know anything,” and cautions that if they’re not careful they’ll end up like their parents, domestic laborers for wealthy white people.

Mandisa wonders if it was a mistake sending Mxolisi to be circumcised that winter when he came of age. She had hoped it would help him get his life together, but instead he’s “lazier than ever.” That morning, as the Girl says her goodbyes at her university, Mxolisi joins a group of friends moving with a purpose through the

neighbourhood, picking up its members on the way to St. Mary Magdalene church.

At university, the Girl sits with a group of friends including three black African women from Guguletu. Everyone is upset the Girl is leaving, and she herself doesn’t want to say goodbye quite yet, so she offers to take three of her friends home. They appreciate the gesture but worry about a white woman driving into Guguletu in the late afternoon. Still, the Girl insists and gathers her three friends, plus a young man who lives near her in Mowbray, and begins to drive.

The group leaves, chanting and splitting up as they weave through the township. Mxolisi’s group then encounters a burning car. They watch it burn and joke about the fate of the driver, who has either fled or been burned alive. They wonder if the truck was delivering Tuberculosis medicine, and speculate the “boers are scared we’ll give it to them. Since our mothers work in their houses,” and that is why medicine can be delivered easily but not quality education. The sound of police sirens scatters the group. They continue through the township, meet up with their other half, which has salvaged metal from a van, and then split up again, returning home.

Mxolisi and his friends pass the police station, which everyone treats cautiously, as they don’t know “what Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

The novel pays careful attention to the political and social fabric of South Africa leading to Mxolisi’s murder of the Girl, not to justify the crime but to explain how it came to pass. Here, in charting how certain well-intentioned political movements festered and erupted into pure violence, the novel also charts the increasing

radicalization of Mxolisi’s generation. This passage also reminds readers that Mxolisi’s generation is still young and ignorant; although they have an abundance of pent- up energy and anger against the government and their circumstances, they are still just “big-mouthed children

[who] don’t know anything.”

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Mandisa once again singles Mxolisi out as the problem child in her brood. She’s willing to try anything to help him get on the right path—including sending him to be circumcised when he came of age, hoping, it seems, that the procedure would turn him into a man. Once again, though, Mxolisi is stubborn and headstrong, unable to be controlled or shepherded toward a different path.

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Although the novel never explicitly says that the Girl is Amy Biehl, this passage mirrors her story thus far. Amy was a Fulbright scholar with a heart for helping people, as seen both by her very presence in South Africa (she was there to help the residents prepare for their first-ever democratic elections) and her willingness to put herself in danger in order to do something nice for her friends. This connects back to Mandisa’s letter to the Mother at the beginning of the novel, when she noted that “people like [the Girl] so believe in their goodness” that “they never think anyone would want to hurt them.” Thus, Mandisa depicts the Girl as innocent and altruistic but also naïve and idealistic.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

In joking about the fate of the driver of the burning car, Mxolisi and his friends reveal themselves to be callous and desensitized to violence. Plus, the fact that they come across a burning car at all emphasizes how violence is commonplace in their township. Although the novel implicitly criticizes Mxolisi and his friends for their hardened hearts, it also points out that they have every reason to be angry; here, the boys discuss that the only way they get basic necessities (such as life-saving medicine) is if it is convenient or beneficial for white people (boers).

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Mxolisi and his gang are clearly disdainful of the police, who are likely white and corrupt. This passage also Page 5

mood the pigs might be in.” Even so, “there is always the possibility of sporting with them.” The group continues to split as people move towards their own homes.

Meanwhile, the Girl begins to drive her four friends. Everyone is silent, as they know today is “a marked day

[…] A day that spells closure.” The Girl and her friends begin to sing “We have overcome” as they drive;

however the song fizzles after only a few rounds.

Meanwhile, Mxolisi and his group of friends are almost home, but they’re distracted by a crowd swarming a small car, “chanting and screaming, fists stabbing air.” Though Mxolisi and his friends are heading the other way, “[b]ack they run, the magnet too powerful for their stomachs, hungry for excitement.”

suggests that the white law enforcement is unreliable and volatile, as they serve the township based on their fluctuating “mood[s].” Desensitized to violence and simmering with anger, the boys also consider “sporting,” or playing, with the police, meaning that they see violence against their white oppressors as a darkly entertaining pastime.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

While everyone in the car likely expects to get “closure” in the sense of saying a final goodbye to one another after college, the novel foreshadows an even more final goodbye that the Girl must make to her friends.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

This passage is important because it points out that Mxolisi was not first to the scene—a riot was already forming around the Girl’s car, and Mxolisi and his friends are merely drawn into the fray.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Chapter 3

Summary

Mandisa is working at the home of her employer, Mrs. Nelson. Mrs. Nelson claims she can’t pronounce Mandisa or any other native names because of the clicks, and calls her “Mandy” instead. Mandisa notes today is Mrs.

Nelson’s “day-off,” even though she doesn’t really work in the first place. Unlike Mandisa, who uses her day off to catch up on chores at home, Mrs. Nelson spends her day off going to the gym, shopping, and having lunch with her friends, and always comes home complaining that she is

“exhausted.” However, Mandisa knows her own life is harder than that of her mlungu woman (white employer). Mandisa is doing “real and exhausting work,” and on her day off she “work[s] the hardest and longest of all week.” Mrs. Nelson cuts Mandisa’s day short, although she has not finished working, and drives her partway home. Mrs. Nelson has broken her very predictable routine, and so Mandisa knows something is very wrong. Mandisa gets in the car, and observes Mrs. Nelson’s serious face. She suspects something has happened in Guguletu, or one of the other black townships. Mrs. Nelson does not drive Mandisa home to Guguletu, as no white people are

allowed there, but instead drops her off at a nearby bus station.

The bus station is chaotic. Mandisa asks her fellow commuters what has happened, but no one knows.

Mandisa assumes it’s another youth riot and is upset by this prospect. She feels children have become “power Analysis

Mandisa compares her life to that of her white employer, highlighting the stark contrast between the two women. The white Mrs. Nelson, riding on the coattails of white privilege, can afford to hire Mandisa, take a day off of work, and, it’s heavily implied, not work at all on the other days, either. Mandisa’s schedule is an inversion of Mrs. Nelson’s: instead of resting for six days and having one “exhaust[ing]” day, Mandisa works for six days and has one day off. Even then, her day is not spent lunching and shopping but trying to cram a week’s worth of

housekeeping and parenting into a single day.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Mrs. Nelson’s behaviour suddenly turns compassionate and serious, which strikes Mandisa as odd. This

conversely implies that Mrs. Nelson doesn’t usually treat Mandisa warmly, gesturing to the broader dynamics

between black and white people under apartheid.

Overall, Mrs. Nelson seems like a frivolous woman—after all, she complains of “exhaust[ion] after a long day of trivial activities to her overworked, impoverished employee—but here the novel points out that she’s not as naïve as the Girl and understands that crossing into the black township of Guguletu would not be wise.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

This passage enfolds two of the novel’s key themes. In criticizing the way the youth have become radicalized and “power crazed,” Mandisa points to the festering racial tensions in South Africa, which seem to only be Page 6

crazed” and tyrannical, putting “absurd demands” on their parents like boycotting work, school, alcohol, and red meat. Mandisa is fed up with “this nonsense.”

Mandisa makes her way onto a bus, densely crowded

with bodies and packages and grocery bags. The bus driver yells that Guguletu is “completely surrounded” by police. Mandisa reflects on how there has been trouble in Guguletu since its creation by the government. She considers the irony of the name, which means “Our

Pride,” although residents call it Gugulabo, or “Their Pride.”

Mandisa remembers being dumped in Guguletu with her family as a child. She was raised in Blouvlei, but then, like tens of thousands of others, she was relocated from her former home into this enormous city made up of tiny houses, which she describes as “squatting structures. Ugly. Impersonal. Cold…”

The government underestimated the number of Africans they were relocating, and thus had not built enough houses. Mandisa bitterly reflects on how her family was actually worse off after their relocation: they are “still living in shacks,” but while they once enjoyed “well-knit communities,” they are now intermixed with strangers. Meanwhile the government blamed the Africans, arguing

“there were just too many Natives […] How was that its fault?”

School was also an issue in Guguletu. Blouvlei had one school and Guguletu had a dozen, but children and

parents who assumed they would go to the school where their old teachers worked were mistaken. Like their students, teachers were scattered, and the Department of Education was predictably disorganized. On opening day, many schools were full by the time Mandisa and her brother Khaya arrived, but they were allowed in by their former teachers, because they were good students.

Still, as lucky as she was to be in school with teachers she knew, Mandisa was shocked by the school’s size, and the realization that her classmates were mostly strangers. Mama refused to listen to Mandisa’s complaints, even as Mandisa wished she was one of the children who had not getting worse rather than better. She also criticizes the youth for weighing their parents down with “absurd demands,” which speaks to the way that family can be burdensome.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

The two slightly different names for the township

highlight black South African’s anger and frustration at the government, as well as the way that language can connect people to their shared experience or history. The name “Our Pride” suggests a unified and harmonious city

(or, more broadly, a country) that all citizens are proud to call their own, but this is far from reality. Black South Africans feel like strangers in their own land, and thus call the town “Their Pride,” indicating that white people still run the country and treat black residents as pawns to be moved around and pushed off to the side—and that the white people are proud of it.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

The housing project in Guguletu functions as a symbol of the government under apartheid; like the buildings, the government is “[u]gly,” “[i]mpersonal,” and “[c]old,” and cares little for the residents it is supposed to nurture and protect.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Not only are the houses themselves inadequate, but there aren’t even enough of them. As the housing project can be read as a symbol for the South African

government, this passage emphasizes that the

government is inadequate and unreliable. “[W]ell-knit communities” appear to be the balm against such

injustice, but the government doesn’t even give black South Africans that comfort, stirring up established communities and substituting friends with strangers. Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Education is scarce in the Guguletu that Mandisa knows as a child. It’s only by being good students in the past that Mandisa and her brother are afforded spots in the already overflowing school. Here, education leads to more education, which will possibly allow Mandisa and Khaya to break out of the shackles of poverty. This explains the adult Mandisa’s earlier lament about how

“burdensome” it is for her to know that her children aren’t going to school like they’re supposed to.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

The novel introduces Mama, Mandisa’s mother, who is depicted as a firm, no-nonsense figure in Mandisa’s life. In charting Mama and the young Mandisa’s relationship, the novel draws attention to some of the behaviours that Page 7

secured a place in a school, and had the year off. However, as an adult, Mandisa now realizes some of those children would never return to school.

Mandisa relates her own troubles with education to current issues in Guguletu, where there are still not enough teachers or schools. Additionally, she recognizes that mothers are working, or drunk, or dead (“We die young, these days”), and are thus unable to force their children to go to school.

Mandisa still misses Blouvlei, which, although made up of shacks, was “no pretence,” unlike Guguletu, which

pretends to be a “civilized” “housing development” but is actually “harsh and uncaring.” The difference, in her mind, is that living in Blouvlei was a choice—the shacks were built by the families inside of them, and the community was tight-knit. She feels the dehumanizing houses in Guguletu “could not but kill the soul of those who inhabited them,” and “loosen[ed] the ties among those who dwelled in them.”

Back on the bus in the novel’s present, Mandisa listens to her fellow commuters speculate about what’s going on in Guguletu. Someone says schoolchildren have beaten up university students, which doesn’t make sense to

Mandisa, who assumes the university students are black. A young man claims he really saw what happened, saying a car was “stoned, overturned, and set alight.” As people ask the man for more specific information on where the crime occurred, Mandisa realizes it was close to her home. She worries about her children, and prays to God to keep them, especially Mxolisi, safe. She then feels guilty for favouring him, but understands it is to make up for indirect “bewilderment,” “anger,” and “rejection” she felt for him in his early years.

The bus driver drops off his passengers earlier than usual, telling them it’s their own fault for having troublesome children. Mandisa feels lucky that the bus has stopped close to her house.

As Mandisa walks home, she continues to worry about her children, especially her daughter, Siziwe. The street is swarming with people, and she struggles to push through the crowd. Someone elbows her, and she loses a shoe in the adult Mandisa models for her children, like trying to force them to go to school.

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Mandisa illustrates how the problems in Guguletu are like a domino effect: because of institutionalized racism, black South Africans are kept in poverty and forced to work long hours for little pay. This arrangement is extremely grating, and many people turn to drink.

Whether parents are drinking, working, or dead, they simply can’t be engaged in their children’s lives and be around enough to ensure their children are going to school. Plus, institutionalized racism means that schools in black townships are sparse, underfunded, and

understaffed, which makes education not only less

appealing but also less impactful.

Theme: Colonialism and Apartheid

Theme: Family, Tradition, and Obligation

Once again, the housing developments symbolize the South African government under apartheid. The housing in Guguletu pretends to be civilized but is actually “harsh and uncaring,” just like the government itself, which couches its inhumane racism in laws and policies. Even though people are packed in tighter than ever before, such confined spaces actually “loosen the ties” among residents. This

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