2. Summarizer (Sydney B.)

Summary #1(Chapters 1-7): The beginning of Khaffir Boy is introduced by a description of where the story takes place, Alexandra. Alexandra is described to be a shantytown full of the struggling colored people of South Africa. Their main goals are to keep food on the table, bills paid and their passbooks in order. Due to this hard life, this caused Johannes to act beyond his years and look over his family. Johannes’ father at one point was arrested because he passbook was not in check. Johannes, his mother, his sister Flora and his brother George had to find ways of surviving without a workingman in the house.

Summary #2(Chapters 7-15): One afternoon Johannes’ father returned after a year of being separated from his family. Things had drastically changed. The family had become used to looking for necessities in a garbage dump and learning how to get by with very little. This caused to be a struggle with Johannes, George, Flora and Maria always being hungry. Johannes believed that after his fathers return everything would normal again. Little did Johannes know that, that was far from the truth. Johannes along with his mother and father tried to help the families’ financial situation. Johannes mother believed that maybe the answer was Christianity, this caused uproar between her and her husband. Her husband was brought up in the tribal way of living and wanted to pass that on to his family. All that lead to was Johannes’ mother being arrested, Johannes’ father being given the run around and Johannes having to watch the horrible experience of prostitution in Alexandra.

Summary #3 (Chapters 15-Part One): Maria, Johannes little sister became ill. Due to the families financial position Johannes mother waits as long as she can to go and take her to the doctor. As Johannes becomes restless and bored he began to hang out with children in the neighborhood. One day they made fun of the workers who were responsible for cleaning up the waste of the people of Alexandra. Johannes was embarrassed by some of the members by being asked to step inside the bucket of waste.  During the section of the book Johannes family continues to encounter problems such as the fact his father is arrested again, and that his mother has a hard time obtaining papers for him to be able to attend school. Those papers are in an important part of Johannes future, which leads to his “passport to knowledge”.

Summary #4 (Part Two-25): The quote at the beginning of Part Two really helps sum up this selection of the book “Education will open door where none seem to exist” Due to the tribal upbringing of Johannes’s father he was against education. He believed that it was a trait of the white man that he didn’t want to pass down to his children. However, Johannes’ mother did not attend school either but she had a different approach. She wants her children to be educated and to have a better adult life then her and her husband. Mrs. Mathabane believes that education will open up doors to a new world and possibly make life easier with more exposure. It is explained in the book that Mr. Mathabane wants to embrace ignorance, while Mrs. Mathabane wants to her children to embrace the “well of knowledge”.

Summary #5 (Chapters 25-Part 3): In the section Johannes is introduced to a world that he has only been able to see in the movies and dream about, the white world of South Africa.  Johannes is invited to go and visit his Granny’s employers home, The Smith’s. They are an exception to the perception of white people during the apartheid in South Africa. They are friendly and quite generous. They give Johannes some of their son, Clyde’s old books, toys and clothes. Johannes goes and visits the Smith’s with resistance. During this time he becomes aware of the true segregation and ways that the races are separated. Johannes sees that the buses are different, that the phone booths are different and that these things may be marked differently but that their functions serve as the same. Throughout this section Johannes experienced the different ways of life in South Africa and was exposed to more opportunities that he may be able to make a name out of himself in this unfair world. 

Summary #6 (Part 3- Chapter 41): In this section Johannes was promoted in his schooling. He became a more prominent tennis player and was inspired by Arthur Ashe, an African American tennis player. His mother became a more devout Christian and began preaching the “gospel” and speaking in tongues. At first Johannes believed Christianity had made his mother crazy, but upon visiting church he realized all the members were preaching “gospel” and speaking in tongues. Johannes father even attempted to send his son to tribal school to teach him traditional ways of life.

Summary #7 (Chapter 41-47):  Johannes feels that reading and tennis are important parts of his life. With him playing tennis it has allowed him the opportunity to see how some white people in South Africa can be accepting blacks and believe that apartheid is wrong. Johannes even becomes aware from his friend Andre that attended college in America, where people were able to live peacefully. This amazed Johannes because he didn’t know that whites and blacks could live peacefully together and have equal opportunities. Due to Johannes newfound friends they his “own” people believe he is an “Uncle Tom” or a traitor. With the Bantu children being against learning “their suppressors” language Afrikaans, they began to boycott. The children didn’t attend school, which lead to riots and the police killing innocent people. Buildings were set on fire and people began looting to survive. South Africa wasn’t a safe place to be.

Summary #8 (Chapter 47-51): Johannes was feeling pressured by his family to take a job from Simba Quix. The companies was known to pay their company employees well and are trying to move toward not following apartheid. Due to the way that Johannes had grown up in South Africa he wanted to go to America to be given better opportunities. Countries began to refuse to play against South African teams in the tennis cups. A few changes began to take place in hopes of accommodating both whites and blacks. This lead to tensions between both races. Johannes was even threatened that if he didn’t withdraw from the tennis match he would be banned from tennis for life. Johannes didn’t withdraw. It gave him the opportunity to meet influential tennis players, but was it worth discontinuing his dream?

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