Mother to Mother

Besides serving as the novel's setting, Guguletu is also a symbol of the entire system of apartheid. Guguletu is, after all, a community the South African government designed with the explicit intention of racial segregation, and it is home to all the problems we associate with systemic racism: rampant poverty, overcrowded and underfunded schools, and a police force that terrorizes the population but does little to stop widespread crime.

The significance of Guguletu as a symbol for apartheid, however, goes deeper. Mandisa describes the town as inhospitable from the very start, and not simply because of its material impoverishment. She dwells, for instance, on the barren, sandy landscape, saying that it was "unable to hold down anything, not even wild grass" (28). The houses, meanwhile, are depressingly uniform in appearance, and the neighborhoods haphazard and lonely; most of Guguletu's residents were not able to remain close to their former friends and schoolmates when they moved. The entire atmosphere of Guguletu, in other words, speaks to the government's contempt for black South Africans. Its goal, in moving them, was simply to place them out of sight; beyond that, the government makes no effort to ensure that Guguletu is welcoming, homelike, or even survivable.