Race
Race is the most prominent theme in My Chidren! My Africa!. Athol Fugard is a white South African, and saw the impact of apartheid second-hand through the experiences of his black friends and the black actors in a theater group he worked with. He wrote My Children! My Africa! to expose some of the ongoing struggles of apartheid in the 1980s, particularly related to education. Apartheid was a system of segregation laws that kept black South Africans from the spaces and resources to which whites had privileged access. In My Children! My Africa!, two of the characters are black, and one is white. Isabel, the white character, initially thinks that the black characters will be grateful to her for visiting their school and will not equal her intelligence and personhood. However, she comes to love both Thami and Mr. M, and recognize through them the way the difficulty and importance of the struggle against apartheid. Thami and Mr. M are both proud of their race and their racial heritage, even if they have different ideologies about what it is necessary for an individual to do to end apartheid.
Education
In South Africa at the time shown in My Children! My Africa!, schools for white and black South Africans were completely segregated. This is shown in the play by Isabel and Thami attending different schools, and the fact that Thami did not receive an equal education to Isabel is shown by Isabel's shock and disgust at how simple and dull Thami's school seems. However, the play shows that even black South Africans raised in these segregated areas had the intellect to succeed in academics and in life, if the government would have allowed them the chance them.
The subject of teaching and teachers is also very important to the play. All of the characters are either teachers or students, and the traditional relationship between teachers and students is shown through the characters of Thami and Mr. M. Mr. M keeps an emotionally distant relationship and often tells Isabel that he will tell Thami what to do rather than ask him. Secretly, Mr. M tells Isabel that Thami is his favorite student and that his biggest goal, after all his years of teaching, is for Thami to succeed.
Loyalty
Thami's loyalties to different people are tested throughout the play. At the beginning, Thami's strongest loyalty is perhaps to Mr. M. He does as Mr. M wishes, competing in debate and leading Mr. M to believe that he might go on to higher education. However, he also knows that he must be loyal to himself and his people, and he starts to feel conflicted about the education system set up by the government for black South Africans. Once Isabel enters his life, he is also loyal to her for some time. They practice together for their competition, meeting regularly and supporting one another by researching and studying. However, after some time, he breaks her loyalty as a teammate and friend by quitting the team and saying that he probably cannot see her anymore. His loyalties have been pulled away from both Isabel and Mr. M by his new loyalty to the Comrades and the Cause, which come to dominate his life choices.
Friendship
The theme of friendship in My Children! My Africa! is most salient in the friendship that develops and then falters between Isabel and Thami. Though separated by race and gender, it seems at the beginning of the play that they will beat the odds and form not only a successful team but a friendship, or even a closer relationship. However, when Thami joins the Comrades, they want him to break off any contact with white people, and he must drop off the team and even tells Isabel that they shouldn't see each other at all any more. Isabel tells him, "You used the word friendship a few minutes ago. It's a beautiful word and I'll do anything to make it true for us. But don't let's cheat, Thami. If we can't be open and honest with each other and say what is in our hearts, we've got no right to use it" (p.51). One of the questions raised by the play is whether Thami and Isabel's friendship could have worked out, given their many differences and the tense moment in South Africa's history. In any case, because the Comrades believe that friendships between whites and blacks are against the Cause, Thami feels that he has no choice.
Politics
Some would say that all works of art are political in nature. However, some pieces of literature are written with the explicit purpose of challenging people's political views and awareness of political issues. My Children! My Africa! is an example of such a play. Athol Fugard wrote the play based on the experiences of black people he knew and his daughter's experience growing up as a white women during apartheid. The play asks about the individual's responsibility in relation to questions of social justice. Mr. M believes that a broken or prejudiced political system must be attacked from the inside, with knowledge. In contrast, Thami believes that such a political system must be destroyed with force. Isabel's relationship to the political issue of apartheid was perhaps most analogous to the audiences who first saw Fugard's play. They were bystanders to the political issue, perhaps directly benefited by the dominant political system. Isabel becomes aware of the political problems that she ignored as a child, but does not involve herself in actually dismantling the system, involving herself in neither Mr. M or Thami's ideologies of change.
Names
One's name holds a piece of one's identity, and having many names often shows the many different relationships one has with others. In My Children! My Africa! one crucial aspect of names is how they reveal one's heritage as Bantu or English, which correlates highly with one's race. Isabel struggles to pronounce Mr. M's full name and the names of others in Thami's class, showing how uncomfortable she is pronouncing Bantu words, since she is white, comes from an English-speaking family, and attends an English-speaking school for white children. Thami and Mr. M, on the other hand, have no problem pronouncing Isabel's name or the names of any of the authors they discuss; white, Western culture is a constant presence in their lives. Mr. M even shortens his name purposefully so that all students can pronounce it, even though he is strict and traditional about most things in his classroom.
One can also choose the name they are called or gain a name as part of their reputation. Thami and Mr. M discuss this in Act II, Scene 1. Mr. M calls Thami a "silly boy" (p.65) and when Thami tells him not to, he asks if he should call him "Comrade Thami"(p.65) instead. This is because the resistance fighters called themselves comrades; Mr. M uses this title ironically, to emphasize Thami's link to them. Thami counters that people call Mr. M names: "stooge, sell-out, collaborator "(p.66). Again, these names are said to hurt Mr. M by linking these ideas to his identity.
Childhood and Coming of Age
Childhood is one of the most important themes in My Children! My Africa!, as might be guessed from the appearance of the word "children" in the play's title. The play can be seen as a "Bildungsroman" or coming-of-age literature, since over the course of the play both Thami and Isabel mature in many ways. Thami makes the life decision not to further his education but instead to leave the country and join a movement of black people fighting physically for change. Isabel realizes how closed-minded she was throughout her childhood, interacting with black people only rarely and with them in service roles. She comes to see Thami as a close friend and Mr. M as a mentor.
The theme of childhood is stressed through flashbacks. Thami tells a story to the audience about how he used to love school when in Second Form, and was even asked to read an essay he wrote to the entire school. He takes the audience through his growth from Second through Tenth Form; he progresses from enthusiasm to cynicism about the education system. Mr. M also tells a flashback story about when he was around ten years old, around the same age Thami was in his story, when he argues with Thami in their last scene together. Mr. M tells Thami about the teacher who inspired him to love books, showing how little Mr. M changed, following that inspiration to read and teach until it brings him to his death.
