Kaffir Boy Essay

Kaffir Boy Essay

1/9/09 Along with the terrible living conditions there was sub-standard education provided to the black children and it was often impossible to get the children into the schools because the parents couldn’t afford the tuition, book, and uniform fees. They would learn to read and write but it took a long time and they had to learn in their native tribe’s language and in English. This helped them when they grew up and worked for the white man but that’s all most of them had to look forward to and near non-existent paycheck for back breaking work. (About Jackson) “He refused to go to school because his father led him to believe that an education was a tool through which white people were going to take things away from him, like they did in the old days.” The black people stayed afraid and suspicious of the white people for years after thing happened they would learn because they thought school was used to teach the blacks how to be slaves for the white people, often time the ones who believed this have never been to a school in their life and are completely ignorant. The schools where very harsh in their rules almost military like if the children did something wrong even if it wasn’t their fault they would be beaten with canes… Johannes was beaten of ten because his mother could not always get the tuition payments in on time or he did have all his books because he couldn’t pay for them. This put a bad taste in his mouth about school and considered leaving school many times like many other children had but he stayed for his mother’s sake and his own future. The racist term kaffir is the equivalent of nigger it means infidel. This term was used to put down all the black people. The sever level of racism in South Africa is so terrible that whites often didn’t refer the blacks by their name only by kaffir or some other rasist term.

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