Cry, the Beloved Country

The great red hills stand desolate, and the earth has torn away like flesh. The lightning flashes over them, the clouds pour down upon them, the dead streams come to life, full of the red blood of the earth. Down in the valleys women scratch the soil that is left, and the maize hardly reaches the height of a man. They are valleys of old men and old women, of mothers and children. The men are away, the young men and the girls are away. The soil cannot keep them any more.

In this description we see the ruination of the land propogated by the colonists who've damaged it. The tribe can no longer farm, as it's done for centuries. The young people are moving away because they cannot provide for themselves..... the tribe, like the "bloody" earth has been broken and destroyed.