Mother to Mother

Mxolisi is Mandisa's eldest son, as well as (one of) the American student's killers. Because he is missing for most of the novel, however, our knowledge of Mxolisi is in many ways very limited—particularly because the little we do see of him is filtered through Mandisa's perceptions, memories, andeven imagination (as when she attempts to reconstruct what happened on the day of the crime). Further complicating things is the fact that Mandisa's descriptions of Mxolisi at times seem to contradict each other. In the opening pages of the novel, she says that she "was not surprised" that Mxolisi killed someone and implies a history of violence—or at least disobedience—by remarking that he "seeded himself inside [her] womb" with "total lack of consideration if not downright malice" (1). Elsewhere, however, Mxolisi acts in exceedinglygenerous and considerate ways, intervening in an attempted rape and offering to drop out of school to help support his mother. Several passages, in fact, paint a picture of Mxolisi as exceptionally gentle and sensitive: he was very close to his mother as a young child, and he takes the deaths of Zazi and Mzamo deeply to heart.Perhaps most surprisingly, Mxolisiradiates a sense of vulnerability even after participating in a murder; Mandisa describes his eyes as full of "pain and terror" (197).

In point of fact, however, Mxolisi's elusiveness as a character is one of the most significant things about him. Mxolisi grew up surrounded by poverty, violence, and oppression, and those forces have necessarily shaped him; it is difficult, if not impossible, to know what Mxolisi is "really" like independent of his environment. Part of the tragedy in Mother to Mother is that Mxolisi in some sense does not have the chance to be a full character, but is instead relegated to being "an agent, executing the long-simmering dark desires of his race" (210).

Although Amy Biehl's death served as the real-life inspiration for Mother to Mother, her fictional counterpart is never named, and appears in the novel only briefly, as a figure of Mandisa's imagination. Knowing littleabout the student directly, Mandisa portrays her as happy and innocent quite literally to a fault, likening her first to a "swan," then to a "puppy," and repeatedly wishing that she had had the foresight to avoid driving into Guguletu (5, 6).

The American student, then, is even more unknowable than Mxolisi—in her case, because the world she inhabits is so different from the world of Mother to Mother that it strains Mandisa's ability to describe it. As in Magona's treatment of Mxolisi, however, this vagueness serves a purpose: like Mxolisi, the student is less a person than a stand-in for her entire race. Her fatal "blindness" to the dangers of Guguletu is therefore not so much a character trait as it is a nod to her status as a sacrificial lamb (she is simply too good to realize that bad things can happen), as well as astatement on the overall refusal of white society to take note of the plight of black South Africans.

China is Mxolisi's father, as well as Mandisa's first love and first husband. Mandisa began dating China as a fourteen-year-old, when she adored him for his popularity, good looks, andthe respect he showed her by not pressuring her into sex. China does not take the news of Mandisa's pregnancy well, worrying largely about his own future and lashing out at Mandisa. By the time the couple marry, they resent one another deeply, and China ends up abandoning his wife and child after a couple of years. China's character arc thus echoes the broader process of disillusionment Mandisa experiences over the course of her adolescence: from something like a fairytale prince, China becomes a "low-down heartless cur" (123).

Tatomkhulu appears only in Chapter 10, when he explains South Africa's colonial history to his granddaughter Mandisa. He focuses in particular on the story of the cattle-killing, and given the symbolic significance of this story to Mother to Mother, we can read Tatomkhulu as a kind of embodiment of the ancestral knowledgeand anger that drive the novel's events.

Dwadwa is Mandisa's third partner, and her husband at the time the novel takes place.Though he is the biological father only of Siziwe, Dwadwa never shows favoritism among the children, which earns him Mandisa's praise and respect.She describes him, moreover, as a reliable and even-tempered man, and we see hints of his practical good sense in his frequent warnings about Mxolisi; unlike Mandisa, whose perceptions of her son are clouded by mixed love and resentment, Dwadwa recognizes that Mxolisi is in danger of bringing "big trouble" to the family (71).In this way, Dwadwa functions as a touchstone for the novel's readers, balancing out Mandisa's narrative in places where it may be confused or inaccurate.

Mandisa's troubled relationship with her mother speaks to the complex nature of parent-child relationships in Mother to Mother. Although the two seem to have gotten along well enough when Mandisa was a young girl, their interactions become tense as Mandisa enters adolescence; Mandisa's mother worries obsessively that she will become pregnant, and insists that Mandisa undergo regular examinations to ensure that she is not having sex. Eventually, she sends her daughter away from Guguletu entirely, which Mandisa interprets as a rejection: "Makhulu's kindness, her gentle ways, could not stop that other hunger. The gnawing question in the mind of the abandoned child, the banished child, the forsaken child" (101). Despite the complexities of Mandisa and her mother's relationship, however, both women find separating after Mandisa's marriage to China painful.

Reverend Mananga is the minister who turns Mxolisi's group away on the day of the murder. Interestingly, he is also the man who appears in the novel's final pages, when he tells Mandisa that he has "found a place" for Mxolisi and his friends. This statement proves truer than we might at first imagine, because it is Mananga that leads Mandisa to the house where Mxolisi is hiding.

Beyond his role as a plot device, Mananga is largely an unknown,but his profession is significant. Elsewhere in the novel, the Church appears to derive some of its legitimacy from white supremacy. China, for instance, marries Mandisa when his white pastor tells him to do so: "He did not have to convince China or his father or anybody else of his truth. It was a naked truth. Clothed only the two things he was: White. A man of God" (126). Mananga's presence as both a clergyman and a friend to Mxolisi provides a counterweight to these other depictions of Christianity.

Nono is Mandisa's childhood friend, although the two girls are very different temperamentally. Nono is noticeably bolder than Mandisa, dating Khaya (at first) behind her friend's back, and ultimately sleeping with him. The fact that Nono and Mandisa become pregnant within months of one another thus underscores the limitations of free will in the novel; although Mandisa behaves very differently than Nono, both girls' fates are essentially the same.