Where are examples of racism in the book cry, the beloved country

Segregated Services

The first incident of systemic racial divide that we see is when Kumalo takes a train from Ndosheni to Johannesburg. Since most of the white people have cars of their own, the trains are usually filled with black people. Still, the train is divided into sections for 'Europeans' and 'nonEuropeans.' The nonEuropean section is fairly crowded.

The same is true for facilities in the city. In Johannesburg, the gold mines build high buildings, beautiful houses, and a beautiful hospital for the Europeans. In the black communities, there is a hospital where one can find 'people lying on the floors. They lie so close you cannot step over them.'

Black men go to Alexandra, Sophiatown, or Orlando, because those are the places where black people are allowed to live, but when they get there, there is a six year waiting list for a house. In the meantime, multiple families are renting space in the same house or people build temporary houses out of whatever materials they can find. The conditions not only expose people to the elements, but are often unsanitary or lack privacy in ways that lead to sex and crime.

Divide and Conquer

At the Mission House, Kumalo meets with both black and white priests who serve the community to try to figure out what has happened to the black community in Johannesburg. The priests ' ... talked of criminals, of how white Johannesburg was afraid of black crime.'

Much of the blame goes to the white men. Basically, the white men need black workers to dig up the mines, but it is inconvenient for the white men to have to deal with the tribal unit. Instead, they tear up the farming land and pull black men together from various tribes to offer them labor jobs. Once they are separated from their families, the black youth lead 'loose and lazy lives.'

Kumalo's brother, John, recognizes the problem as being one of white power and privilege, which he blames on the church and the chief. He is happy to be in Johannesburg where ' ... I am free of the chief. At least I am free of an old and foolish man, who is nothing but a white man's dog. He is a trick, a trick to hold together something that the white man desires to hold together.'

After listening to John speak, Msimangu worries ' ... that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it. And I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when the white man has turned to loving, he will find we have turned to hating.'