Resumo de The Children Of Soweto - Mbuleo Vizikhungo Mzamane

The Children of Soweto
In his "The Children of Soweto", Mbulelo takes you through a first-hand tour of the Apartheid system in South Africa. As you read through, you feel part of the process, you feel the electricity, tension, energy of the school children as the picture of the vices Apartheid system in Soweto is painted in a rather subtle but precise and incisive language. This book is a perfect modern day masterpiece of the immortality of literature.
Part One My School Days in Soweto
Mbulelo sets out the stage, taking you through the school days of ''the children of Soweto''. Through Sebelo, Mbulelo plays out his narrative in the first person narration, thereby engaging the reader as the story unfolds. His style is not without humor.
"Relations between Pakade, Phokoe and us were always cordial and informal, which could not be said for our relationship with other teachers. Through most of Part One, Mbulelo presents the characters as regular students, in class and in school.
His writing is a perfect blend of English, Xhosa, Africaans, Zulu, and township folk language, so much so that as you read through, you feel as though you can already understand Zulu or Xhosa, only when you come to think about it at the end, the only word you can remember is Amandla.
Then slowly Mbulelo introduces the riots in Soweto, first as small school strikes and before you know it, it escalates to full-scale riots that rock the entire country, characterized by street demonstrations, breaking and burning of building, shops, looting, and what more, the police station, and fire station being brought down to ashes. The students engage in all this to protest against the introduction of Afrikaans as the official language of instruction in schools.
He concludes Part One with a powerful poem,
We break up, we break up,
We don?t care if the school blows up
You have to read it yourself to feel the tension that was rising in those days.
Part Two The Days of the Riots
The author shifts the spotlight to the other class of the residents of Soweto - parents and workers. Here he uses Sipho, a black South African and Johannes Venter a white, to highlight the unavoidable coexistence between members of the different races against the backdrop of the Riots in Soweto, now full blown.

Part Three: The Children of Soweto
If in Book Two you feel the students have taken total control of Soweto, then Book Three will bring tears in your eyes as students dies after violent confrontation with the police and hostel dwellers (workers). The book begins with the death of Muntu, Sebelo?s best friend.

If catharsis is what you look for at the close of a novel, then you must be looking in the wrong place because here you will not get it. But this is characteristic of most African writers in those days, Ngugi Wa? Thiong?o is notorious in this as well.

The end is the saddest part of this book, and it is not with much colour and valour as the other parts of the book, even the humor degenerates to nostalgic thoughts of Sebelo, exiled in the modern day Botswana. They lost the war and Soweto was too hot and cold keep them no longer.

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