Kaffir Boy cover art

Kaffir Boy

The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa

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Kaffir Boy

By: Mark Mathabane
Narrated by: Mark Mathabane
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About this listen

The classic story of life in apartheid South Africa.

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.

This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation, for Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered “Kaffir” from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do - he escaped to tell about it.

Mark Mathabane was born and raised in the ghetto of Alexandra in South Africa. He is the author of Kaffir Boy, Kaffir Boy in America, Love in Black and White, African Women: Three Generations, Miriam’s Song, and The Proud Liberal. He lectures at schools and colleges nationwide on race relations, education, and our common humanity. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon.

©1986 Mark Mathabane (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Africa Cultural & Regional Historical Parenting & Families Relationships World Social justice

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Critic reviews

“Like…Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land.… In every way as important and exciting.” ( Washington Post)
“This is a rare look inside the festering adobe shanties of Alexandra, one of South Africa’s notorious black townships. Rare because it comes…from the heart of a passionate young African who grew up there.” ( Chicago Tribune)
“In this powerful account of growing up black in South Africa, a young writer makes us feel intensely the horrors of apartheid.” ( Publishers Weekly)
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The story of a boy and a nation who had darkness brought upon their world by a people, but whose total destruction was also prevented by the generosity of other people.

Great story, well told

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Amazing story/autobiography. Very hard to listen to at times, just because of how raw it was. Very informative

excellent first hand portrayal of the apartheid.

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Was taught about apartheid while in primary and secondary school in uganda. I have read Mandela's long walk to freedom and it gave a political view and to some extent a common man's view. This gave an account of the suffering of a common person starting at the bottom of the pyramid. Highly recommend this to anyone.

Deep illustration of apartheid

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lovely, amazing book about first hand account of living in south africa as a black family in the 80s

amazing must listin

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Brilliant book - highly recommended. Wonderfully and meaningfully read by the author himself. The story is touching, honest, and inspiring, and for me - deeply meaningful.

As a white Afrikaner woman, born in the mid-seventies to a family in the white suburbs around Durban, this book has been deeply valuable to me. Sixteen years old when Mandela was released, and 18 years old when South Africa's first free and fair elections were held, I have lived my entire adult life under a cloud of guilt, and too frightened to learn more how bad things really were during Apartheid - a system that paid for primary and secondary schools on par with the best UK private schools have to offer, and which I took for granted.

What touched me about this book is that, despite all the suffering experienced by Mark Mathabane and his family, he makes it clear that the highly sophisticated Apartheid machine, with its finely tuned capacity for propaganda and outright lies, cheated both white and black South Africans the opportunity to meet and learn from one another. His openness and forgiving heart gave me the courage to really listen, to really hear and understand how it felt to live on the other side of the high security compounds in which whites locked themselves.

And that is what this book has done for me - allowing me to leave shame behind and move forward with an understanding and open heart.

Crossing the threshold

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