The Yellow Bakkie (Symbol)
The yellow truck that Maureen and Bam drive in on, and that they keep hidden between the huts, is a powerful symbol both for the reader and for the couple themselves, representing their freedom. We see the way that the bakkie symbolizes freedom to them on the night that July spontaneously drives off in it without telling them. They immediately enter a state of anxiety if not outright panic. Though they can't use the vehicle, they depend on its presence to keep them emotionally stable.
The Radio (Symbol)
The radio symbolizes a connection to the outside world. For the most part, Maureen and Bam's knowledge of what's happening makes little difference to how they go about living. They're trapped. When the English language channel goes off the air, they're deeply shaken; not because they think their situation might change sometime soon, but because they have a need to continue to hear how bad it is.
The Gun (Symbol)
Like the useless vehicle and the useless radio, the gun, hidden in the roof of the hut, hovers over the Smales like a strange reminder of what they can't do, yet they they cling to it as a symbol of hope. While it represents a certain power - the power of any gun - they know that up against the vast black population that surrounds them, a single gun is no actual protection. This gun in particular is for shooting birds. Despite their better knowledge, they are adamantly attached to the gun and devastated, completely giving up hope and believing their fate sealed, when the gun goes missing. But it is not as though they have lost a practical, usable tool; rather they have lost a symbol of their freedom.
Mealie-Meal (Motif)
This coarse, corn-based meal, which is a common staple of black rural South African people, makes a recurring appearance throughout the novel as a motif reflecting the primitive experience of the Smales family. Mealie-meal is a marker not only of their daily experience, but also of their broader condition being brought onto a level with average rural blacks.
Race (Symbol)
In circumstances of all-out race war in which the enemy-ally relation is defined solely by skin color, race becomes a symbol for power. In the actual circumstance of South African apartheid, whiteness was equated with power. In the counter-factual events of Gordimer’s narrative, the tables have turned and blackness has now come to definitively symbolize power.
