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Miriam Ngidi
Morris Tshabalala is a beggar who plies his trade around a street intersection called Terminal Place. He lost his legs in a gold mining accident, for which he blames white South Africans, who under apartheid reap the economic benefits of Black labor. Now he walks around on his hands, which are hardened and have little sensation left. When Tsotsi comes to Terminal Place looking for a victim to rob and kill, he steps on one of Morris’s hands. Morris curses and calls Tsotsi a “whelp of a yellow bitch”—a chance choice of words that reminds Tsotsi of the mysterious yellow dog in his memory. Deciding to kill Morris, Tsotsi stalks and terrifies him over the course of an evening. Although Morris eludes Tsotsi by following two white men pushing a stalled car and later hides in a restaurant, he has to emerge when the restaurant closes, at which point Tsotsi corners him down a dark street. Yet, having observed Morris for many hours, Tsotsi has begun to sympathize with him—the first time Tsotsi can remember sympathizing with one of the targets of his violence. Instead of killing Morris, Tsotsi engages him in a long conversation about Morris’s life, his disability, and his desire to live. When Morris asks Tsotsi why Tsotsi has to kill him, Tsotsi realizes he doesn’t have to—he has a choice whether to commit acts of violence. He decides to spare Morris’s life, a decision that decisively alienates him from his old, stereotyped identity of violent gang member and motivates him to discover more about who he truly is.
Morris Tshabalala Quotes in Tsotsi
The Tsotsi quotes below are all either spoken by Morris Tshabalala or refer to Morris Tshabalala . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
[Morris] looked at the street and the big cars with their white passengers warm inside like wonderful presents in bright boxes, and the carefree, ugly crowds of the pavement, seeing them all with baleful feelings.
It is for your gold that I had to dig. That is what destroyed me. You are walking on stolen legs. All of you.
Even in this there was no satisfaction. As if knowing his thoughts, they stretched their thin, unsightly lips into bigger smiles while the crude sounds of their language and laughter seemed even louder. A few of them, after buying a newspaper, dropped pennies in front of him. He looked the other way when he pocketed them.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Are his hands soft? he would ask himself, and then shake his head in anger and desperation at the futility of the question. But no sooner did he stop asking it than another would occur. Has he got a mother? This question was persistent. Hasn’t he got a mother? Didn’t she love him? Didn’t she sing him songs? He was really asking how do men come to be what they become. For all he knew others might have asked the same question about himself. There were times when he didn’t feel human. He knew he didn’t look it.
Chapter 7
Quotes
What is sympathy? If you had asked Tsotsi this, telling him that it was his new experience, he would have answered: like light, meaning that it revealed. Pressed further, he might have thought of darkness and lighting a candle, and holding it up to find Morris Tshabalala within the halo of its radiance. He was seeing him for the first time, in a way that he hadn’t seen him before, or with a second sort of sight, or maybe just more clearly. […]
But that wasn’t all. The same light fell on the baby, and somehow on Boston too, and wasn’t that the last face of Gumboot Dhlamini there, almost where the light ended and things weren’t so clear anymore. And beyond that still, what? A sense of space, of an infinity stretching away so vast that the whole world, the crooked trees, the township streets, the crowded, wheezing rooms, might have been waiting there for a brighter, intense revelation.
I must give him something, he thought. I must give this strange and terrible night something back for all it has given me. With the instinct of his kind, he turned to beauty and gave back the most beautiful thing he knew.
‘Mothers love their children. I know. I remember. They sing us songs when we are small. I’m telling you, tsotsi. Mothers love their children.’
After this there was silence for the words to register and make their meaning, for Tsotsi to stand up and say in reply: ‘They don’t. I’m telling you, I know they don’t,’ and then he walked away.
Chapter 11
Quotes
‘Why Boston? What did do it?’
A sudden elation lit up Boston’s face; he tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his nose started throbbing, but despite the pain he whispered back at Tsotsi: ‘You are asking me about God.’
‘God.’
‘You are asking me about God, Tsotsi. About God, about God.’
Chapter 12
Quotes
To an incredible extent a peaceful existence was dependent upon knowing just when to say no or yes to the white man.
‘Come man and join in the singing.’
‘Me!’
‘I’m telling you anybody can come. It’s the House of God. I ring His bell. Will you come?’
‘Yes.’
‘Listen tonight, you hear. Listen for me. I will call you to believe in God.’
Get the entire Tsotsi LitChart as a printable PDF.
Morris Tshabalala Quotes in Tsotsi
The Tsotsi quotes below are all either spoken by Morris Tshabalala or refer to Morris Tshabalala . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
[Morris] looked at the street and the big cars with their white passengers warm inside like wonderful presents in bright boxes, and the carefree, ugly crowds of the pavement, seeing them all with baleful feelings.
It is for your gold that I had to dig. That is what destroyed me. You are walking on stolen legs. All of you.
Even in this there was no satisfaction. As if knowing his thoughts, they stretched their thin, unsightly lips into bigger smiles while the crude sounds of their language and laughter seemed even louder. A few of them, after buying a newspaper, dropped pennies in front of him. He looked the other way when he pocketed them.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Are his hands soft? he would ask himself, and then shake his head in anger and desperation at the futility of the question. But no sooner did he stop asking it than another would occur. Has he got a mother? This question was persistent. Hasn’t he got a mother? Didn’t she love him? Didn’t she sing him songs? He was really asking how do men come to be what they become. For all he knew others might have asked the same question about himself. There were times when he didn’t feel human. He knew he didn’t look it.
Chapter 7
Quotes
What is sympathy? If you had asked Tsotsi this, telling him that it was his new experience, he would have answered: like light, meaning that it revealed. Pressed further, he might have thought of darkness and lighting a candle, and holding it up to find Morris Tshabalala within the halo of its radiance. He was seeing him for the first time, in a way that he hadn’t seen him before, or with a second sort of sight, or maybe just more clearly. […]
But that wasn’t all. The same light fell on the baby, and somehow on Boston too, and wasn’t that the last face of Gumboot Dhlamini there, almost where the light ended and things weren’t so clear anymore. And beyond that still, what? A sense of space, of an infinity stretching away so vast that the whole world, the crooked trees, the township streets, the crowded, wheezing rooms, might have been waiting there for a brighter, intense revelation.
I must give him something, he thought. I must give this strange and terrible night something back for all it has given me. With the instinct of his kind, he turned to beauty and gave back the most beautiful thing he knew.
‘Mothers love their children. I know. I remember. They sing us songs when we are small. I’m telling you, tsotsi. Mothers love their children.’
After this there was silence for the words to register and make their meaning, for Tsotsi to stand up and say in reply: ‘They don’t. I’m telling you, I know they don’t,’ and then he walked away.
Chapter 11
Quotes
‘Why Boston? What did do it?’
A sudden elation lit up Boston’s face; he tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his nose started throbbing, but despite the pain he whispered back at Tsotsi: ‘You are asking me about God.’
‘God.’
‘You are asking me about God, Tsotsi. About God, about God.’
Chapter 12
Quotes
To an incredible extent a peaceful existence was dependent upon knowing just when to say no or yes to the white man.
‘Come man and join in the singing.’
‘Me!’
‘I’m telling you anybody can come. It’s the House of God. I ring His bell. Will you come?’
‘Yes.’
‘Listen tonight, you hear. Listen for me. I will call you to believe in God.’
