Cry, the Beloved Country Observation #2

Maile Danilchik

1/28/17

World Literature 10th Grade

Cry, The Beloved Country Paragraph Assignment #2

Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country. New York, Scribner, 2003.

 

    Before apartheid was officially enforced in South Africa (1948), there was still a psychological and socio-economic barrier between black Africans and white Afrikaners living there. Job, housing, and economic discrimination led to a growing gap between white people who could afford to live and prosper in cities such as Johannesburg and black people who were denied an equal chance at successful jobs had to establish shanty towns and other low-income housing. Some Africans were desperate enough to look towards theft to support their families and themselves. Therefore, the stereotype put on shanty towns and African communities of crime was created, resembling that of ghettos and crime in the United States. The connection that some white Afrikaners failed to make was that crime was not in the DNA of the black Africans, it was a condition imposed by their environment and financial disadvantages due to an unfair economy.

   In Cry, the Beloved Country, the politics of this socio-economic imbalance and the perspectives of white South Africans who did not make the key connection between economic inequality and crime is portrayed through a council meeting. Council members agree that “[they] shall always have native crime to fear until the native people of [South Africa] have worthy purposes…” (Paton, 107), illustrating the assumption made about the African native demographic that many white Afrikaners made, believing that the native black people did not have a purpose in their town. Essentially, some white Afrikaners thought that the black Africans were an inconvenience or an obstacle, not a group of people. The council also mentions how African natives could not afford the proper education for their children, leading to one council member to question whether “more schooling simply means cleverer [native] criminals.” (Paton, 107). I think that this question brought up by the council shows the mindset and belief that black Africans showed inherently criminal tendencies, once again not making the connection as mentioned earlier. These political differences and socio-economic divides were the roots of apartheid since the population was already split by race and economic separation.