Kaffir Boy

The author’s favorite sport becomes tennis over soccer, and Scaramouche is demanding but also becomes a confidant and father figure. The author learns that the black tennis association in South Africa is vastly underfunded compared to the white organization.

The author’s life starts to revolve around playing tennis. His mother urges him to concentrate on his schoolwork, while his father regards tennis as a “sissy’s sport” (215) and criticizes his son for playing it.

Although Mathabane accepts his mother’s side in her battle with his father and respects her advice, he can’t accept her feelings towards religion. She has become a devoted member of the Full Gospel Church of God, but the author feels that religion coerces blacks in submitting to whites’ domination, forcing them to be passive in response. He does, however, read aloud to his mother from the Bible, as she is not able to read. He likes the language and wisdom of its stories. He believes that a kind of force operates in the world, but she feels that her pastor could help her son.

One of the men the author writes letters for, a man named Limela, detests Christianity. He says, repeating a common African expression, that “when the white people came, we had the land and they had the Bible; now we have the Bible, and they have our land” (218).