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South Africa
Kenya in the 1950s.
This is the story of two boys who live on a farm at the foot of Mount Kenya and how their lives are changed for ever by the Mau Mau.
Mugo is thirteen and Mathew is two years younger. Mugo works in the farm kitchen. He is the son of the chief groom. He hopes to be able to go to school when he is older. Mathew is the son of owner of the farm, Mr Grayson. The boys form a friendship of sorts. But it is an unequal friendship because of the social rift between them. And it is also a friendship which is endangered by the activities of the recently formed secret terrorist movement, the Mau Mau.
Mathew’s father prides himself that he has always treated his workers fairly but that proves to be no protection. The Mau Mau break into his enclosure secretly one night and force his Kikuyu workers to take the oath. And the fact that they took it under duress does not help them later.
The attitudes of Mathew and his father are contrasted with those of their neighbours the Smithers. Inspector Smithers tells Mathew’s father that he is far too trusting and his son Lance is a mean, deceitful bully who leads Mathew astray. In fact it is one of Lance’s ploys which goes wrong which spells disaster for the Graysons and all their workers.
The Graysons’ farm is also contrasted with the locations and the reservations on which many of the Kikuyu live. The moderate Mugo and his father are contrasted with Mugo’s older brother and cousin who run away to the forest to join the Mau Mau.
This book is full of action. One evening the Graysons’ car breaks down and it is discovered that the fuel had been contaminated. So they are forced to spend the night in the car in the middle of the bush in constant fear of a murdering attack by the Mau Mau.
This book gives a good picture of Kenya during the time of the Emergency. The differing attitudes of the people of the time are explored. Above all it shows the plight of people caught up in events beyond their control.
11+
Johannesburg 1976 at the height of apartheid.
Seventeen-year-old Ruby Winters lives with her parents in a large house in Johannesburg. She attends an expensive private school, is doing well at both her studies and at sports, is popular and is a prefect. But despite all this Ruby is uncomfortable at school. She feels she cannot be herself and has always to be on guard. And she can never invite any of her school friends to her home.
This is because her parents do not believe in the segregation laws which keep black and white apart. Her mother owns an art gallery and displays the work of black artists. Her father is a liberal lawyer who defends black activists. Underground meetings of the banned African National Congress are held in her house and afternoon teas are served on the lawn to both black and white.
Then things begin to change for Ruby. At school she falls foul of a boy who has a large following. She soon finds how fickle her so called friends are as most of them rapidly desert her.
But shortly after this she makes two real friends, Loretta and her brother Johann. But there is a different problem here as they are both Africaners. At first Ruby’s parents are not happy about her making friends with them. Ruby accuses them of being hypocrites. They have taught her that “all men are created equal” and surely that applies to English and Africaans as well as black and white. Ruby’s parents see her point and reluctantly accept her new friends. But Julian, her mother’s star painter cannot accept Johann as he is one of the class who has imposed apartheid –– even although Johann rejects the ideas of his people and wants to attend a foreign university. Even worse is to follow as Ruby invites him to her school disco and he is beaten up there.
The story moves on to the climax and the Soweto riots. And despite everything Johann proves himself a real friend when he warns Ruby’s father that his life is in danger.
This book gives a good picture of the contrasts of South African life during apartheid. There are the white people living their comfortable lives in their spacious houses with beautiful gardens safe between locked gates and the utter poverty and wretchedness of the lives of the inhabitants of the townships.
And against this background are worked out the themes of friendship and accepting people for they are and not just for the label society has put on them.
Thought provoking.
Young adult to adult.
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