Summary
Act I, Scene 1
A school debate is in progress at Zolile High School. Mr. M, a teacher, stands at a table with two students, Isabel and Thami, on either side of him. Isabel is white, and Thami is black. Mr. M calls for order while Isabel and Thami argue with each other about something Isabel has just said. Thami believes that she said that women are more emotional than men, while she clarifies that she said "women were more intuitive than men" (p.7). Finally, Mr. M is able to get their attention and silence by ringing the school bell "violently" (p.7).
Mr. M reads them the definition of a debate from his personal dictionary, reminding them that the opposing viewpoints should get "equal time and consideration" (p.7). Mr. M calls for an end to the open section of the debate and asks for Thami from Zolile High School to make his closing statement, reminding him to be brief.
Thami stands and the audience applauds him wildly. He is clearly very confident and comfortable speaking in front of others, and his closing statement is emotional and well-reasoned. He argues that African culture is in "great peril" (p.8) because of Western colonial influence. Specifically, he argues that a woman's role is to be in the home, rather than to work the same jobs as men. At one point, he even makes the audience laugh by saying that he does not have milk in his breasts to feed children while his wife digs roads. He ends by asking the audience to vote for him.
Mr. M calls on Isabel, who is from Camdeboo Girls High School. She stands with determination and makes her closing statement for the point of view that women should be allowed to hold the same jobs as men. She argues that Africa is held back by clinging to traditional, primitive values. She also warns that arguments based on differences between sexes can easily be expanded to other groups people hold prejudices against. The crowd applauds her politely.
Mr. M calls for a vote by a show of hands. Seventeen people vote for Thami and twenty-four vote for Isabel, meaning she has won. They break for the afternoon, so the audience of students leaves. Mr. M, Thami, and Isabel chat together. Thami congratulates Isabel and tells her that she did a good job. Isabel says she almost thought that Thami believed what he was saying and Thami protests, perhaps jokingly, that he does. Mr. M jokingly scolds Thami for exploiting his popularity with the audience. He also says that he believes the audience are the real winners of the afternoon since they had to listen intelligently and picked Isabel over their friend. Mr. M leaves, saying he hopes that there is another occasion when Isabel can join them.
Isabel and Thami are left together as they pack up their school bags. They talk about Mr. M; Isabel says "He's wonderful" (p.13) but Thami will only say "He's okay" (p.13). Isabel says that she had a good time and admits that she wasn't expecting it; Thami agrees, and Isabel prompts that this is because he's never debated against a girl before. Isabel describes the great feeling of debating freely, rather than the stuffy way they do it at her school. Isabel calls it a "riot" (p.14) and Thami makes a joke that Isabel doesn't understand at first about not saying that word since "Police start shooting as soon as they hear it"(p.14). Thami makes another joke and this time Isabel gets it, adding that she can just imagine how badly her parents would react to this kind of joke. She tells him that she is a "sober, sensible, English-speaking South African. I'm the third generation"(p.15) and tells him about her dad, mom, and sister who all work in the family pharmacy. She tells him that she's the rebel of the family. Saying that she'll answer any questions as long as she gets to ask some afterwards, she also reveals that she's eighteen years old, likes English and wants to be a writer, and likes to play hockey. Thami asks what she had for breakfast and she describes in vivid detail what her maid, Auntie, served her.
Isabel asks Thami to talk about himself and his family now. He tells her that Mbikwana is an old Bantu name and that his parents are "ordinary, hardworking, Bantu-speaking, black South African natives. I am the one-hundred-thousandth generation" (p.16). His mother is "a domestic" (p.16) and his father works for the railway, both in Cape Town, while he lives with his grandmother and sister in Camdeboo.
Isabel starts to look at the class register; as she reads out names, Thami points to where the students sit. Looking at names carved into Thami's desk, Isabel asks where his is and Thami responds that he doesn't "want to leave any part of [him] in this classroom" (p.17). Isabel says she has no problems with school, and that she believes her school years may be the happiest of her life, and Thami says that is not true for him. He tells her that school does not mean the same thing to white and black people. In Junior school he loved going to class, but "everything changed" (p.18). They go back to talking about Mr. M, with Isabel guessing that Thami is the teacher's favorite and that Mr. M might even have Thami's whole career planned out. Something about this makes Thami suddenly mad, and he tells her that he doesn't do what his teacher says. He apologizes for snapping at her but says that he gets upset because Mr. M treats him like a child and tries to control him. Isabel says that she's going to write for the school newspaper about the debate, and Thami gives her a copy of his speech to use. They hear Mr. M ringing the school bell loudly and they run out of the room, surprised by the time.
Act I, Scene 2
Isabel stands alone onstage and gives a monologue directly to the audience. She talks about a place on the edge of town called Brakwater, which most people just call "the location" (p.20). She complains about how ugly it is, saying the mayor of the city said the same thing one day to her dad. She says that she's been there a few times to visit her maid when she was sick and to take medicine to the clinic. The houses there are made of bits of corrugated iron and other scraps, and they don't have electricity or running water. Isabel says she "ended up being damn glad [she] was born with white skin" (p.21), but that she doesn't think about it that much.
After Thami's school created a debate team, Isabel tells the audience that they contacted her school to try to set up a "pioneering intellectual exchange" (p.21) and her school decided it would be okay after checking with the police and ensuring that the students would not walk around outside of the school at all. Isabel went with two other girls, "feeling very virtuous" (p.21), reminding themselves that English was not these students' first language. When they got there, the school and classroom were gray and dingy. The students immediately studied them critically, not gratefully as the girls had expected.
Isabel clarifies that it is not as if she has never had "contact across the color line" (p.22) since she gossips with her maid in the morning and a man named Samual who delivers medicines for her father and with whom she likes to have conversations about life. However, in Bakwater she was the outsider, and she soon became excited by the new situation—a "new world"(p.23). She decides that she wants more contact with these people to expand her understanding.
Act I, Scene 3
Isabel is alone onstage when Mr. M enters, wiping his head with a handkerchief. He says that he has been looking for her. She calls him Mr. M when greeting him, which makes him happy. He asks her about a "return visit" (p.25) to his school and she tells him that she would be very excited to do so. He tells her that he has not come to ask her to debate against one of his students again, but rather to join Thami on a team for a new inter-school English literature quiz. Isabel delightedly agrees, even when Mr. M warns her that he can be a strict teacher.
Calming down, Isabel tells him that visiting his school has been one of the best things that has ever happened to her because it was so eye-opening to see the school and meet people from the location. When she tried to explain how it felt to be on equal terms with black people to her parents, they didn't understand. She says her mom is still frightened of black people, but she's not because "Knowledge has banished fear" (p.29).
Isabel asks Mr. M if he has asked Thami about competing yet. He replies that he is not going to ask him, he will tell him, since he is the teacher and Thami is the student. Isabel tells him that this sounds "dictatorial" (p.30). He responds to her by saying that black South Africans adhere to more traditional hierarchies of age. He also tells her that a teacher's dream is to mentor one specific, gifted student in life, and this student is Thami. He says that Thami wants to make mischief now, but he sees real leadership and power in his future if he shapes up. They return to the subject of the competition, with Mr. M saying that his real plan is to get Thami a university scholarship out of it. They agree to start practicing the next week.
Analysis
It is clear that Thami believes in equality of all races in South Africa, but his position on women is not clear. After the first scene, where Thami and Isabel debate about women's rights, the reader or audience is left to wonder how good Thami is at playing devil's advocate and using rhetoric designed to win, and how much he may actually believe in what he says about women needing to stay in their traditional roles.
At its core, My Children! My Africa! is a story about segregated education during apartheid. Apartheid was an era in South African history in which black and white South Africans were segregated by law. These laws determined where people were allowed to live, their schools, who had access to public places, and more. The education given to black South Africans was not only separate, but it was not equal to the education whites had the privilege to receive. The school buildings were often run down, and the teachers poor and perhaps poorly educated themselves. In addition, tribal African culture could not be taught in these schools, which is why Thami later complains about his people's history not being taught.
One of the most important quotes in this section of the play is "knowledge has banished fear" (p.29). The quote can be seen as Fugard's main message, especially at this part of the play. Isabel is white, and thus is outside of, or rather the beneficiary of, apartheid's laws. While she had some knowledge of black people and apartheid's effects, just meeting and really communicating with black people for a day radically changed her perspective. Fugard encourages white audience members to be like Isabel and to get to know at least the characters in his play, so that they can stop fearing black people or involvement in social justice causes, and take on individual responsibility for what happens in their country.
The way that Isabel struggles to pronounce Mr. M's name and the names of other students in Thami's class is significant because it shows how important names are in showing one's cultural identity and associations. Because Isabel lives in an English-speaking home and attends an English-speaking school, she has not come in much contact with Bantu names. Perhaps some, like Mr. M, have even attempted to make things easier for non-Bantu-speakers by shortening or changing their names. However, Thami and Mr. M have no trouble pronouncing her name, since her language and culture are dominant, meaning they have had to learn to speak that language and pronounce those types of names for much or all of their lives.
The tension between Mr. M and Thami is clear even from the first scene of the play. Though the audience does not yet understand their difference in political ideologies, we see the way that the strict, traditional relationship between the men causes tension that will be revealed further through their monologues and conversations with Isabel with one another. Thami does not want Mr. M to control his life decisions, while Mr. M sees Thami as his favorite student and perhaps as the embodiment of his hopes for non-violent change in South Africa.
