"Yet, even today we still laugh sad laughs, remembering our innocent incredulity. Our inability to imagine certain forms of evil, the scope and depth of some strains of ruthlessness. We laugh, to hide the gaping hole where our hearts used to be. Guguletu killed us . . . killed the thing that held us together . . . made us human. Yet, we still laugh."
Before the government made them move, the people in Blouvlei resisted the news of the forced migration. The prospect of mass removals had first existed as a rumor, and it was mocked by many and regarded as a hoax. People couldn't believe that the government would uproot that many millions of people. The immense trauma of the experience separated families, forced mothers into work, and left millions of children without school. Mandisa tells of how devastating this was to their communities, and how this devastation led to hatred of the white government.
"There are not enough mothers during the day to force the children to go to school and stay there for the whole day. The mothers are at work. Or they are drunk. Defeated by life. Dead. We die young, these days."
Motherhood is a central theme in the novel, and Mandisa often remarks on the limited capacity of her care. As she is forced to work in order to support her family, her children are left to fend for themselves in a community with scarce resources. Mothers are left with no hope for giving their children a better life. They are defeated by the terrible circumstance. Their own lives are threatened by their poverty, as they must contend with high mortality rates. By telling the reader this, Mandisa is able to redirect some of the blame she might receive for her son's actions. Her bleak reality introduces a picture of Mxolisi's childhood, and we see the defeated and desperate circumstances of the generation that raised him.
"Mxolisi turned one year. A part of me hated him. Not him . . . but what he was . . . had been . . . the effect he seemed to have on my life. Always negative, always cheating me of something I desperately wanted. I shrunk; because he was."
Mandisa's relationship with Mxolisi was not easy in the beginning. Because she gets pregnant so young, she must sacrifice her own childhood in order to give her son one. Her early resentment of him is something that causes her great shame later in life and is the reason that she is easier on Mxolisi than she is on her other two children. She writes that she resents what Mxiolisi "had been" because his life had destructive implications even before his birth. This points to the fated nature of Magona's thesis. Furthermore, the line "I shrunk; because he was" is a poignant picture of motherhood in poverty. In a society where an individual can scarcely hope to work enough to improve their own situation, to have a child is an ultimate sacrifice in which one must work to pass on their situation to their children, all the while leaving oneself worse off.
"‘Unganyebelezeli, kuza kudlalwa!’ piped Mxolisi’s little voice, calling for daring and defiance. To look at him do the war cry of the Comrades, poised in a defiant stance, his tiny fist up in the air, couldn’t but send all those who heard him into paroxysms of laughter.
There was nothing unusual about this. Mxolisi, now four years old, could already tell the difference between the bang! of a gun firing and the Gooph! of a burning skull cracking, the brain exploding."
This quote gives a notion of how violent Mxolisi's childhood was and helps create an understanding of how murder could have become so normalized to him. Mxolisi's upbringing taught him that violence was a useful tactic against one's enemies. He was also taught to hate the white ruling class in South Africa that would create such a situation as to cause millions of children to be raised in poverty and violence.
"‘No,’ the girl’s mother said quietly. ‘There were many people there. Looking. Some were even laughing. None stopped the crime, none. Until your son arrived on the scene.’"
This passage helps highlight one of Mxolisi's key features: that he was a political leader in his community and was on the way to do a lot of good in this role. Mxolisi viewed his community as an entity that had to be protected from the cruel government. It was a time of political upheaval and revolution in South Africa, and Mxolisi was at the frontlines of the fight. In Mother to Mother, we gain access to these parts of Mxolisi's character slowly, as we do we gain a tragic picture of the man he could have been.
"‘Yes, Mzukulwana,’ he sighed, ‘the biggest storm is still here. It is in our hearts — the hearts of the people of this land. ‘For, let me tell you something, deep run the roots of hatred here. Deep. Deep. Deep.’"
When Mandisa's grandfather teaches her the history of the colonization of South Africa and tells of the tragedies that befell the Xhosa people she descends from, Mandisa teaches us how deep the hatred against the descendants of the colonizers runs. This generational hatred is a large part of Mxolisi's motives, and it is something Amy's mother had no way to understand without Mandisa's explanation.
"‘The sun went and died in the west."
When South Africa was colonized, the Xhosa people sacrificed every single one of their cows in an effort to drive out the colonizers. This was seen as the ultimate sacrifice, as they worshipped the animals, and the cattle constituted a large portion of their wealth. The first sign that this sacrifice was successful would have come from the sun as it turns backwards at its zenith and sets in the east. When the sun sets in the west, the Xhosa people realize their sacrifice has not been successful, and that the colonizers would not be defeated. The sun setting in the west is also a powerful allegory for how the hopes of the Xhosa died with the arrival of the colonizers.
"Tatomkhulu was a fund of facts that, although seemingly different, made a whole lot of sense of some of the things we learned at school. He explained what had seemed stupid decisions, and acts that had seemed indefensible became not only understandable but highly honourable."
Tatomkhulu is the one who explains the sacrifice by the Xhosa of their cattle. Mandisa uses the story to refer back to her son, and in it, we get a clue about how she is coping with his actions. Her conclusion here hints at a justification for her son: what has seemed indefensible can become, at least, comprehensible when understanding you understand the actor's circumstances and desperation.
"But now, my Sister-Mother, do I help him hide? Deliver him to the police? Get him a lawyer? Will that mean I do not feel your sorrow for your slain daughter? Am I your enemy? Are you mine? What wrong have I done you . . . or you me?"
One of the times that Mandisa addresses Amy's mother directly in the novel. In the first chapter, Mandisa outright denies any culpability for her son's actions. Now Mandisa earnestly inquires where the line might be when it comes to the aftermath of the murder. We are let into her inner turmoil about the best way to handle what happened with her son, and she hints at the possible resentment she might feel towards Amy and her family.
"Your daughter. The imperfect atonement of her race.
My son. The perfect host of the demons of his."
As Mandisa tells the story of the murder, she describes a moment of fate in which two individuals encountered each other, to disastrous consequence. She emphasizes the fact that they were both individuals with lives, paths, and dreams. They were also individuals who carried the heavy baggage of their races in a country of brutality. Ultimately, no matter who these people were outside of their race, they were caught in a moment defined by their respective races.
"She was not robbed. She was not raped. There was no quarrel. Only the eruption of a slow, simmering, seething rage. Bitterness burst and spilled her tender blood on the green autumn grass of a far-away land. Irredeemable blood. Irretrievable loss.
One boy. Lost. Hopelessly lost.
One girl, far away from home.
The enactment of the deep, dark, private yearnings of a subjugated race. The consummation of inevitable senseless catastrophe."
Mandisa's concluding statement about what happened at the time of Amy's murder. Mandisa notes that the murder was not an act of brutality against Amy's being, that it had little to do with her individual body. Amy became the unfortunate scapegoat for everyone who profited off of apartheid while blacks lived in misery. Mandisa's depiction of the murder as an "inevitable senseless catastrophe" is key.
