kaffir boy
... South Africa when it was under Apartheid. Mark did fall subject to gangs before he realized that getting an education was what he had to do. Gangs appealed to these uneducated children for many reasons. They thought that the gang would keep them safe from the police. They also thought it was a good source of money. Most of these children just had nowhere else to go during school hours. Mark’s personal reason for going into the gang was his terrible home life. He remembers, “Since staying at home meant hunger and chores, I began attaching myself to gangs of five-, six-, and seven-year-old neighborhood boys who daily roamed the filthy streets of Alexandra in search of food and adventure”(Methabane 53). The gang kind of gave him a false sense of security. He also looked up to these kids as if they knew all. He writes, “These boys were like adults in their knowledge of the ways of the world” (Methabane 53). But in reality all they knew where the ways of the street. If they ever wanted to earn a good living and get a job this knowledge would not help them in the least. Another reason these kids had such resentment towards trying to work up in the world was because they hated the white people. They were taught in school that all whites...