Tsotsi

by

Athol Fugard

Township Term Analysis

In South Africa under apartheid, the term “township” usually meant a city neighborhood or suburb where non-white people—Black/African, Indian, or Coloured—lived close to but segregated from “white” areas of the city. Technically, however, the term “township” could also refer to an all-white area.

Township Quotes in Tsotsi

The Tsotsi quotes below are all either spoken by Township or refer to Township. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

[Tsotsi’s] knowledge was without any edge of enjoyment. It was simply the way it should be, feeling in this the way other men feel when they see the sun in the morning. The big men, the brave ones, stood down because of him, the fear was of him, the hate was for him. It was all there because of him. He knew he was. He knew he was there, at that moment, leading the others to take one on the trains.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), Boston, Die Aap, Butcher
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Tsotsi knew one thing very definitely now. Starting last night, and maybe even before that, because sitting there with a quiet mind to the events of the past hours it seemed almost as if there might have been a beginning before the bluegum trees, but regardless of where or when, he had started doing things that did not fit into the pattern of his life. There was no doubt about this. The pattern was too simple, too clear, woven as it had been by his own hands, using his knife like a shuttle to carry the red thread of death and interlace it with others stained in equally sombre hues. The baby did not belong and certainly none of the actions that had been forced on him as a result of its presence, like buying baby milk, or feeding it or cleaning it or hiding it with more cunning and secrecy than other people hid what they had from him.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Die Aap, Butcher
Related Symbols: Tsotsi’s Knife
Page Number: 55-56
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Gumboot had been allocated a plot near the centre. He was buried by the Reverend Henry Ransome of the Church of Christ the Redeemer in the township. The minister went through the ritual with uncertainty. He was disturbed, and he knew it and that made it worse. If only he had known the name of the man he was burying. This man, O Lord! What man? This one, fashioned in your likeness.

Related Characters: Boston, Gumboot Dhlamini, Rev. Henry Ransome
Page Number: 60-61
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Boston, Morris Tshabalala , Gumboot Dhlamini
Page Number: 106-107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

It was a new day and what he had thought out last night was still there, inside him. Only one thing was important to him now. ‘Come back,’ the woman had said. ‘Come back, Tsotsi.’

I must correct her, he thought. ‘My name is David Madondo.’

He said it aloud in the almost empty street, and laughed. The man delivering milk heard him, and looking up said, ‘Peace my brother.’

‘Peace be with you’, David Madondo replied and carried on his way.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David) (speaker), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi
Page Number: 224-225
Explanation and Analysis:

The slum clearance had entered a second and decisive stage. The white township had grown impatient. The ruins, they said, were being built up again and as many were still coming in as they carried off in lorries to the new locations or in vans to the jails. So they had sent in the bulldozers to raze the buildings completely to the ground.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby, Miriam Ngidi, David’s Mother (Tondi)
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:

They unearthed him minutes later. All agreed that his smile was beautiful, and strange for a tsotsi, and that when he lay there on his back in the sun, before someone had fetched a blanket, they agreed that it was hard to believe what the back of his head looked like when you saw the smile.

Related Characters: Tsotsi (David), The Baby
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Tsotsi LitChart as a printable PDF.
Tsotsi PDF

Township Term Timeline in Tsotsi

The timeline below shows where the term Township appears in Tsotsi. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Identity and Memory Theme Icon
Hatred, Sympathy, and God Theme Icon
Habit vs. Choice Theme Icon
...other men down an unkempt street. It’s dusk. As the four men walk through the township, they end a moment of “reckoning” in which various people in the township note new... (full context)
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Parents and Children Theme Icon
...miles to the “Golden City” to find work. When he arrived, he lived in a township and worked in a mine for a year. In a week, he plans to return... (full context)
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Parents and Children Theme Icon
...work, Gumboot is at the train station planning to take the train back to the township, but he makes “three mistakes.” First, he smiles because he’s anticipating the weekend, having written... (full context)
Chapter 2
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Hatred, Sympathy, and God Theme Icon
...proves. They are drinking at Soekie’s, a shebeen (that is, illegal drinking establishment) in the township. The police often close down shebeens in the township, prompting new ones to open. Soekie’s... (full context)
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Parents and Children Theme Icon
...men’s table. Though born in a European area of the city, she lives in the township because her mother didn’t want her. She writes to her mother asking to know her... (full context)
Chapter 3
Hatred, Sympathy, and God Theme Icon
...Tsotsi passes a church and begins to run “like a man possessed” out of the township toward the white suburb. (full context)
Chapter 4
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
...Tsotsi sees “one of the demolition squads,” men whose job it is to destroy the township piece by piece. He decides to stash the baby in one of the deserted, demolished... (full context)
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Identity and Memory Theme Icon
...was so large she couldn’t get through. Her exit foreshadowed the destruction of the whole township. Tsotsi decides on her house’s ruin because part of its roof is still in place,... (full context)
Chapter 5
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Hatred, Sympathy, and God Theme Icon
...mostly died. The “Reverend Henry Ransome of the Church of Christ the Redeemer in the township” performs the funeral. The gravedigger, Big Jacob, asks the Reverend who Gumboot is, but the... (full context)
Chapter 6
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
...stores and carts. At Terminal Place, the buses make journeys between the city and the townships. Terminal Place becomes active in the morning, when workers start taking buses. By dawn, commercial... (full context)
Chapter 7
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Habit vs. Choice Theme Icon
Tsotsi walks to the township. He keeps trying to stop and think, but his thoughts move so fast—from Boston cutting... (full context)
Chapter 12
Apartheid and Racism Theme Icon
Parents and Children Theme Icon
Identity and Memory Theme Icon
Hatred, Sympathy, and God Theme Icon
...and begins walking when he hears the noise of bulldozers. Evidently, people in the white township have complained that people are reclaiming the ruins, so they have sent the bulldozers in... (full context)