"For nearly thirty years the Communist Party allied itself as a legal organization with the African struggle for black rights and the extension of the franchise to the black majority."
Rosa is caught in a tight place when she resurfaces using the Burger name. While previously, in her parents' generation, the SACP had aligned itself with the black rights movement it now served its own purposes freely. The younger generation of black Africans calls out the SACP on their departure from their previous values. Just about this political moment is when Rosa enters the conversation. This is why Baasie gives her such a hard time. He thinks she's a traitor, like the others.
"The will is my own. The emotion's my own. The right to be inconsolable. When I feel, there's no 'we', only 'I'."
Rosa's relationship with Conrad is somewhat of a tumultuous one. Aware of his many affairs, she stops confiding in him. When he realizes this, he begins to act possessively toward her. Rosa is her own woman, though, and tells him to back off. She is the sole owner of her feelings.
"Yet he has said to me, I would marry you if I could, meaning: I want very much to marry you. I offended him a bit by not being moved. It's other things he's said that are the text I'm living by. I really do not know if I want any form of public statement, status, code; such as marriage. There's nothing more private and personal than the life of a mistress, is there? Outwardly, no one even knows we are responsible to each other...."
By the time Bernard reveals that he's marries, Rosa's fallen in love with him. She believes he would marry her if he could legally, and that's good enough for her. She is willing to be his covert lover, his mistress, so long as he wants her. This decision is accompanied by a proposed move to Paris.
"The blackman is not fighting for equality with whites. Blackness is the blackman refusing to believe the whiteman's way of life is best for blacks."
The political scene in which this book occurs is a violent, unreliable one. The blacks in South Africa begin to resent their white neighbors in the communist party for misunderstanding them. As if the whites believed cooperation was equal to acceptance, they missed the entire reason the blacks were with them. The blacks were taking a stand for autonomy, aligning themselves with the SACP purely for political advantage.
