Multicultural Report on Peter Abraham\'s

Multicultural report on Peter Abraham's "Mine Boy"

South African culture and the American culture

Cultures are the portrayals that a community can be easily identified with, these are the shared values that are peculiar to a given people in a particular region. Though cultures can be similar from one place to another, the predominant factor is that within a given geographical location, those sharing similar lifestyles can be said to share the culture. It is also worth noting that there are no two cultures that can be a replica of each other in as much as some cultural elements can be shared between communities living in geographically distant location. Worth to mention also is the fact that there are no cultures that are superior to other cultures since cultures are autonomous and must be studied in the context of its application within that particular community.

The depiction of multiculturalism in South Africa is depicted in Peter Abrahams' novel called Mine Boy. This was a novel that was written in the 1940 and was first published in 1946 during a period that saw South Africa dominated by the color segregation system otherwise referred to as Apartheid. At this time, the practice of apartheid was predominated though it had not been inscribed into law, a few years down the line the system was entrenched into law (Prima Birungi, 2010). This novel is one of the masterpieces from that era that captured the cultural conditions and the aftermath of these conditions to the society. From this novel we can therefore learn of the cultures that were predominant in South Africa and compare them with those that were and maybe still are predominant in America today.

Mine Boy by Peter Abrahams- synopsis

The novel is based mainly on the main character called Xuma who is practically under transition. At the beginning of the novel, Xuma leaves his rural home in the North and head to Johannesburg, a big city, in search of employment and possibility of making money. As normalcy would have it, Xuma ends up in a suburb area that was meant for blacks alone called Malay camp. The living conditions are squalid and police raids are rampant in search of illicit brews and common criminals. Xuma being new in the slum, Leah, who is depicted as a woman who is kind though very shrewd in her businesses and tough in her stands, gives him a place to stay. He puts up here until some day he lands a job at the mines and moves to Vrededorp, yet another slum area where blacks lived. Xuma ultimately lands a job in the mines, an idea that doesn't go well with anyone in the household where he lives. This reservation was due to the harsh conditions the blacks are subjected to once they are in the mines.

Xuma is depicted as a naive gentleman who never responds to the city life as others do. This is depicted in the scene where he went walking around the city for the very first time and saw black people running just at the sight of whites and white police officers. He refuses to run consequently gets attacked by a policeman, this ends in a scuffle and he hits the policeman back, hence gets the reason to run now.

Within the camp, there are several episodes of alcohol selling and one of the renowned sellers is Leah. She knows it is an illegal business but she is tough and not bothered by the illegality behind it. Indeed she goes ahead and bribes the police who aptly inform her of any impending raids or searches so she closes shop that day and escape arrest. The city life here is depicted as harsh, corrupt and lacks close social mesh. The other women who sell alcohol within the camps are at one time arrested but Leah as usual escapes the net, Xuma feel bad due to the fact that Leah was aware of the arrest but refused to alert the others, to this Leah exclaims 'life is so in the city." Xuma feels the communal consciousness is gone.

Other noticeable characters are Johannes and Daddy both of whom always try to escape from the realities of the society through taking of alcohol, this depicting the absolute poverty under which the blacks were living at that particular time.

Among the other people that live in Leah's household are Johannes and Daddy, both of whom find their solace in taking liquor. Johannes had no courage to speak before getting drunk and Daddy on the other hand was ruined by the excessive drinking till he ended being run over by a car and died.

The other spectacular incidence worth noting in the novel is Xuma falling in love with Elizabeth (Leah's niece). Eliza is a teacher and by that virtue makes every effort to ape the whites since majority of teachers were white by that time. The honest thing was that Eliza loved Xuma but she had the strong lure for the white man's way of life that she could not afford to miss the provisions of white people. She confesses that "I am no good and I cannot help myself. It will be right if you hate me. You should beat me. But inside me there is something wrong. And it is because I want the things of the white people. I want to be like the white people and go where they go and do the things they do and I am black. I cannot help it. Inside I am not black and I do not want to be a black person." (Page 60)

The segregation culture makes some of the blacks hate their culture so much that would prefer the white culture by any means possible, like Leah wants to get in a relationship with someone who speaks like the whites hence runs away from Xuma. Ironically, Maisy had also been pursuing Xuma but Xuma turned her down in pursuit of distracted Eliza. After the running away of Eliza, Xuma comes back to Maisy and they get into a relationship.

Xuma is depicted as a hard working man who is focused on what he wants. At the mines, his outstanding personality earns him the position of being a boss boy for mine supervisor called Paddy Oshea often referred to by Xuma as "the red one." This is the best position the blacks could ever get to in terms of the ranks in the mines. And even with such closeness, the segregation phenomenon was so deep that Xuma realized and even the fellow workers knew that the whites and the blacks had to eternally stay apart, the narrator poses that "His white man had even tried to make friends with him because the other mine boys respected him so much. But a white man and a black man cannot be friends. They work together. That's all. (Page 61)

The Paddy character is used to indicate the possibility of the races working together without discrimination. Despite being Irish (not black), he is understanding and considerate to the black miners and becomes very close friends with Xuma. He is depicted as one who considers the humanity first before looking at the color. His outstanding character is depicted when the mine collapses killing scores of people including Johannes, Xuma together with Paddy lead a strike among the workers resisting the push to venture back into the mines before they were repaired. It is at this incidence that Xuma realizes the significance of being human first and looking at color later.

This character called Paddy and his outstanding characteristics was used to indicate the possibility in crumbling of the segregation system and people working together with fair terms both in the mines and the entire South Africa. Ironically, this foreshadowing never came to pass, indeed the opposite happened with the administration entrenching the system into law a few years after the publication of this book, and that stayed so for a good number of decades up until 1994 when the first free and fair elections were carried out with Nelson Mandela being the first black president, (South Africa Tours and Travel, 2012).

Cultural comparison

From the look at the novel and the main occurrences highlighted that have something to do with the cultures found within the country at one point in time, it is possible to have a comparative look at the cultures that the U.S.A. And south Africa have shared at one point in history and even some that still exist to date. The novel is based on history and most of the cultural standings shown therein are no longer in existence, though some still persist. Of greatest importance are the various cultural patterns that were shared between the history of the two nations and how the current cultures could have bee influenced by the similar cultural backgrounds of the two nations.

Looking at the two countries, it is easy to notice the "melting pot" structures that are portrayed in these cultures. The U.S.A. is known to be a host of people from varied origins like German, Scottish, Italian, Africans and so on hence the mixture of many cultures. This is the same phenomenon with South Africa as portrayed in the novel. There are the Africans, Irish, Dutch (Boers) and the English people among others (Stanford University, n.d).