52 pages • 1 hour read
Sindiwe MagonaMother to Mother
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11–12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Mandisa addresses the white American student's mother directly, asking what she should do with her knowledge of Mxolisi's crime. She laments the death of the girl who had "much yet to do," but also questions why she came to South Africa in the first place(198). Now, Mandisa says she is torn between shame at her son's actions and anger towards the people she feels pushed him towards them: the adults who had earlier praised and encouraged his anger at the white settlers. She fears, moreover, that the same patterns will keep repeating: "There are three- and four-year-olds as well as older children, roaming the streets of Guguletu with nothing to do all day long. Those children, as true as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west—those young people are walking the same road my son walked" (199). She concludes by pleading with God for strength.
The narrative jumps back to sometime"much later" than Mandisa's meeting with Mxolisi. Mandisa opens the door to several of her neighbors—Skonana and Qwati, as well as two women named Lindiwe and Yolisa. They tell Mandisa that they have "come to cry with [her]…to grieve with those who grieve" (200). Mandisa is confused and feels undeserving, but the experience is ultimately a healing one that lessens her feelings of isolation and dishonor. The chapter ends with Mandisa again addressing the student's mother, acknowledging that while neither of them "have chosen the coat [they] wear," she, unlike Mandisa, can at least can "carry [her] head sky high" (201).
Chapter 12 Summary
Mandisa again addresses the student's mother, explaining how bleak her son's prospects were even before the crime: "His tomorrows were his yesterday. Nothing. Stretching long, lean, mean, and empty. A glaring void. Nothing would come of the morrow. For him. Nothing at all" (203).
Mandisa then returns to imagining the afternoon of the crime. As the yellow Mazda drives down NY 1, Mxolisi and his friends are walking home. When the car stops at a red light, someone on the street notices who the driver is, and begins to shout "ONE SETTLER! ONE BULLET!" (205).
The passengers in the car tell the student to keep driving, but the car is hemmed in by traffic. Eventually, Mxolisi and his friends hear the shouting and follow it, "each person going full speed to the epicentre, searching for the one thing that will jump out, the oddity" (206). A crowd gathers around the car and begins to rock it, "playfully, at first" (207).Soon, however, people begin to throw stones at the car, and Mandisa imagines the girl's fear and pain as she's hit in the face by bits of broken glass. Now unable to see, she runs toward a nearby gas station. The crowd chases and surrounds her, despite her and her friends' pleas.
Mxolisi is in the crowd, and Mandisa imagines the effect that the chants and cheers must have had on him: "A song he had heard since he could walk. Even before he could walk. Song of hate, of despair, of rage. Song of impotent loathing" (209). At the last moment, Mandisa pulls back from describing the murder itself to focus instead on the historical forces that have led to it; remembering the prophesy that "a great raging whirlwind would come…[to] drive abelungu to the sea," Mandisa finally characterizes the crime as the "enactment of the deep, dark, private yearnings of a subjugated race. The consummation of inevitable senseless catastrophe" (210).
Chapters 11–12 Analysis
Mother to Mother ends more or less where it began: on the day of the attack, and with Mandisa addressing the murdered student's mother. This circular structure is in part a commentary on the seemingly intractable nature of racial violence in South Africa: Mandisa describes the murder as an event long in the making, and even as the fulfillment of Nongqawuse's prophesy, tying together the themes of fate and colonialism's legacies. On a more personal and poignant note, she implies that Mxolisi's life all but ensured that he would become a killer, if not of the student than of someone else: "But for the chance of a day, the difference of one sun's rise, she would be alive today. My son, perhaps not a murderer. Perhaps, not yet" (210).By the end of the novel, in other words, we understand the reasons behind the violence in South Africa better, but it's not clear whether we are much closer to solving it.
One glimmer of hope, though, does emerge in the interactions between the novel's women. At the beginning of the novel, Mandisa fears the condemnation of her neighbors, sensing that they hold her responsible for Mxolisi's actions. By the end of Chapter 11, however, it is clear that the novel's events have brought the women closer together, with Skonana and Qwati choosing to stand with Mandisa in mourning. Furthermore, the novel itself is a gesture designed to bridge differences and facilitate understanding, with Mandisa speaking to her fellow mother as a companion in suffering: "My Sister-Mother, we are bound in this sorrow. You, as I, have not chosen this coat that you wear. It is heavy on our shoulders, I should know….We were not asked whether we wanted it or not. We did not choose, we are the chosen" (201). Because lack of community has been such a destructive force in Mother to Mother, and because the novel's female characters have so often borne the brunt of that destruction, the ultimate solidarity amongst women hints at the possibility of moving beyond the tensions that divide Guguletu, and South Africa more generally.
