Theme of Racism in Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   Background to the Study

The oppression and exploitation of African people as well as the double oppression of women will be explored by analysing the characters’ influences, pressures and societal manipulations and constraints in the texts. Early African writers had dwelt on addressing the basic African problems like colonialism, neo-colonialism, discrimination, and cultural domination, policies of apartheid racism and propagation of African values to the outside world. African writers use literature as a tool for correcting the ills of the white’s domination. On this note, one of the central tenets of this work is racism in Abraham’s writings.

The injustices and struggles of Rhodesian and Botswana society are mirrored in the fictional lives and communities created by Lessing and Head in their literary constructions. Racial oppression, hatred, prejudice, detestation, intolerance, cruelty, subjugation, and brutality are a few terms that reflect the callous and cruel characteristics of these racially divided societies. Racism is the primary doctrine blamed for the weaknesses and severe suffering in Southern Africa’s disordered societies.

Theme of Racism in Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy

Different novelists explore different themes, depending on the prevailing circumstances of their time. These circumstances could be related to cultural oppression, socio-political disillusionment and racial segregation between the whites and the blacks. It is on the point that the background to the research is to examine the theme of racism in Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy. The author portrays how the evil of racism affect the blacks South Africans. They were humiliated, oppressed, discriminated and disillusioned in the hands of the whites. Abrahams point to the welfare of the blacks as they were exploited so badly and forced to lives separately in the hot tenements, while the white. Lives in an apartment in a very conducive environment.

All these afflictions imposed on the blacks is as a result of colonialism, when the white oppressors came to some parts in African states and treated the Africans as animals because they sees Africans as nothing and that: is the main reason they did not cater for them. The author portrays how South Africans suffered racial discrimination, frustration and poverty from the hands of the white masters. Furthermore, over the years, research have shown that, after the second world war II ended in 1945, the evil of racism that had played black South Africans for decades became institutionalized when the national party came into power in 1948.

All the white African government institutes the system of apartheid which produces laws that required racial segregation and imposed by the regime. On the other Alex La Guma, one of the South Africans writers portrays the evil of racism in his novel, A Walk in the Night. He portrays nothing but the effect of racism between the world of the white man and the black man. In the same vein, throughout the 1960s, the blacks South Africans were forced into segregated township outside the major cities of South Africa, such cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town and Jurtian. For fiction writers and authors of creative non-fictions who sought to speak out against the policies of apartheid in South Africa, this makes their publication possibilities became very limited.

In such instances, and numerous play writers saw their works handed in their home country, South Africa. According to Abrahams, these issues of racism and racial oppression in South Africa occur during colonialism. This forms the basic point of this research work that focuses on the theme of racism in Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy.

Theme of Racism in Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy

1.2       Statement of the Problem

Racism is one of the problems that affect the black natives of South Africans as portrays by Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy. These problems are racial oppression and racial segregation that the whites impose on the blacks.

1.3       Purpose of the Study

The main purpose of this study is to examine the theme of racism in Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy. This research shall further discuss the effects of racism on Blacks and its origin in South Africa.

1.4       Significance of the Study

The significance of this research work will the on the benefits to the entire African society. It shall equally be significant to students of English and Literary studies as well as other researchers who may read the works.

1.5       Objectives of the Study

The objectives of this research work are as follows:

• to examine the theme of racism and its effect on the Blacks in Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy.
• to investigate the causes of racism in African countries.
• to identify and profound solutions to racism in South Africa.

1.6       Research Methodology

The research methodology is primary and secondary research methods. The primary source in the main text books for the project, while the secondary source is the use of critical worlds, library books, literary journals and internet.

1.7       Scope and Limitation of the Study

The scope of this research work will be limited to Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom and Mine Boy. This is to provide details of the work and concentration within the time frame allotted to the project.

Originally posted on April 25, 2021 @ 6:13 am