Mine Boy by Peter Abrahams illustrates in beautiful and haunting prose the oppression that South Africa's black citizens faced in the years before apartheid. The country's white minority imposed its power on black South Africans in several ways, the most significant of which were succinctly enumerated by Nelson Mandela in his book No Easy Walk to Freedom. According to Mandela, the most serious problems included "the crushing poverty of the population, low wages, severe shortage of land, inhumane exploitation and the entire policy of white domination" (Mandela 21). Indeed, the violence imposed by white police officers, the exploitation of black labor, and the cultural narrative that defines “white” as desirable have all contributed to the nation’s injustice. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The first mode of oppression is also one of the most important in 20th-century South Africa. Whites in Johannesburg, particularly those in the city's police force, consistently abused their power by oppressing others through violence. In Mine Boy, one of Xuma's first experiences upon arriving in the town is with an officer at the Malay camp's Saturday market. Without warning, a police van arrives and everyone in the market scatters as the police rush into the crowd with their batons raised. When an officer approaches Xuma, he remains motionless, sure that he has done nothing to warrant an attack. Yet the officer “raised his staff and brought it down with force” (Abrahams 16). The city's police force does whatever it takes to assert its power, and the most effective way to do so is through brute force. This novel is not the only work to illustrate this abuse of power: a scene from the 1987 film "Cry Freedom" describes the Soweto uprising in East London, South Africa, during which more than 700 schoolchildren were killed by police for demonstrating against the education system under apartheid. Police on scene responded with immediate violence, killing and injuring hundreds of people and razing the community (Briley). Here the film connects to Mine Boy – both depict cases in which the South African police brought terror to communities by oppressing them through violence. The second type of oppression that South African leaders impose on others in Mine Boy is ideological. It’s the mentality that being white is desirable, or a goal to achieve, and being black is being inferior. Steve Biko, while in court in "Cry Freedom", describes the mentality as such: "You start to feel like there's something wrong with you...something about your blackness" (Briley) . Many characters in Mine Boy fall victim to this mentality. The “chic” people, for example, at the Malay Camp market, dress like white people, wearing purple suits and black ties. These efforts at assimilation are in vain, however, since their facades are not enough to prevent them from fleeing when the police arrive at the market (Abrahams 15). Eliza, perhaps the most complex and fascinating character in Mine Boy, drives herself crazy with the desire to be like the white people. “I want white people’s things,” she told Xuma. “I want to be like the white people, go where they go and do what they do” (Abrahams 60). “It is the madness of the city that is in me,” she later admits (Abrahams 126) – a madness so great that it eventually drives her from the city. Eliza is not exceptional for having this state of mind. In fact, colonization is designed in such a way that the colonizedfeel the inherent desire to assimilate with their oppressors. In his book The Colonizer and the Colonized, Albert Memmi writes of a colonized person: "Being a creature of oppression, he is necessarily a creature of need" (Memmi 119), and that these desires will become so overwhelming that they will fill the oppressed person with self-hatred and shame. This is exactly the situation that Eliza faces. Her shame is so consuming that she does not allow herself to be with Xuma, the man she loves. Oppression does not have to be tangible to be real; perhaps the form of oppression most relevant to the plot of Mine Boy is this ideological form. Another form of oppression in Mine Boy is the exploitation of black people's physical labor. Xuma arrives in Johannesburg intending to work in the gold mines, work available to black men in the city. Xuma is representative of the waves of people who flocked to South African cities in the 20th century to find work. Like him, they came to carry out difficult work, such as that in the mines, in dangerous conditions. At the end of Mine Boy, despite warning from Xuma and other miners, it is revealed that the mine managers neglected to properly maintain the mine. Rotten beams collapse, crushing Johannes and Chris, who try to hold them up to save the other miners (Abrahams 180). Immediately after the accident, managers try to insist that the next shift of workers go into the mines to repair the beams. The white men in charge have no respect for the lives lost or the danger the work environment poses to employees. Modern South Africa is built on the labor of men like gold miners. In fact, the only reason South African authorities allowed black immigrants to stay in the cities was for their jobs. “The history of South Africa's modern economy began in mining,” writes Wilmot G. James in his book The State of Apartheid (James 75). Africans were tolerated in the cities because of the labor they provided to the economy. Their populations were controlled by police, who routinely stopped black people in the streets, demanding to see their “livrets,” or government-approved documents that prove a person has legal residence in the city (James 82). The booklet appears in Mine Boy, when a police officer asks to see Xuma's pass while Xuma tries to help Dr. Mimi with an injured man. Despite the chaos around them, the officer said to Xuma, “Where is your pass? Let me see it” (Abrahams 73). He takes his time examining it before handing it back to Xuma – everything about the interaction is arbitrary. Why is Xuma the only one ticked off? Why now, when Xuma is clearly trying to help an injured man? The South African government and police worked together to oppress the country's black population, ensuring that the only way for black men to live legally in the cities was to perform the menial labor necessary to grow the economy of the country. The exploitation of black labor is the poverty that has plagued the communities of these workers. According to South African History Online, in 1940s South Africa, 86.8% of "'non-Europeans' living in urban areas lived below the subsistence level" ("History of the Women's Struggle in South Africa"). South "). Poverty was one of the greatest oppressions faced by the country's black and mixed-race people. Malay Camp serves as an example to poor black communities in South African cities. “A row of streets intersecting another row of streets,” describes Abrahams of. 1974.