Book Title: Tsotsi
Author: Athol Fugard
Publisher: AD Donker Publishers (South Africa)
Tsotsi is a story about a gangster who died with a smile in his face. It traces the story of a young black man named Tsotsi whose life was blighted from the start. He is a caricature of life and times of a South African black man growing up in the apartheid (racial segregation) South Africa. The word tsotsi can be loosely translated into English to mean a thug. In fact, it’s a slang word for a criminal in the Sesotho language, which is one of the eleven official languages in South Africa. In the context of the novel, the title illuminates rather conceals the true lifestyle of Tsotsi – a criminal mastermind specialising in car theft and a host of other crimes. Tsotsi, in the context of the novel doesn’t speak Sesotho but tsotsitaal – the street language of underworld figures – a mixture of Afrikaans, Sesotho and IsiZulu languages.
The novel, Tsotsi is a not a crime fiction, but, an emotive and torturous journey to introspection and ultimately redemption.
Tsotsi is explicitly set in the apartheid South Africa of the 1950’s – a turbulent period when apartheid had been declared an official policy of the country in 1948. A wave of anger and political upheavals were simmering on the horizon among many racial groups excluded from the political life of the place – they called home.
Tsotsi, the lead character is a tormented soul. He speaks less of his family. He kills without any hesitation and has no moral compass. He is a man who lost his childhood innocence in the ghettos of Sophiatown (Johannesburg). He grew up deprived, neglected and abused. In his career as a thug, he treats his subjects as life has always treated him, until a chance encounter with an infant he found in a car he had hijacked.
For a time, Tsotsi’s humanity begins to show. He has flashbacks of his destitute childhood. In an attempt to banish the emotional roller-coaster ride brought about by his flashbacks, he decides not to kill the baby. True to form, Tsotsi forces a breastfeeding woman in his neighbourhood to feed the infant at gunpoint. The presence of an infant in his life seems to positively influence and harmonise his discordant soul.
However, the apartheid government was forging ahead with its policy of racial segregation and had declared Sophiatown – an area reserved for white South Africans only. To achieve this ludicrous government plan, the township had to be destroyed – so bulldozers moved in. It was at this stage that Tsotsi redeemed himself – he performed the only and his final act of life. He raced to the falling building to rescue a child he had discovered in his stolen car. A child that was snatched from the warm and loving hands of his parents.
It is indeed a comforting story. It shows the human capacity to right the wrongs of their past, even if it means by doing a single act of humanity. Author, Athol Fugard was making a call to the authorities to save South Africa from the brink of a foreseeable disaster. Fugard’s forewarning was never heeded. It fell into deaf ears and South Africa in the early 1960’s plunged into the dark period of bloodshed, uncertainty and fear. This period lasted until the now retired International icon Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president in 1994.
It is perhaps a fitting tribute to this visionary (Fugard) that the adaptation of his novel into a movie of the same name ‘Tsotsi’ won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.