How they symbolize the experience passed through by blacks in South Africa in the apartheid period
Xuma is the novel's protagonist. Xuma leaves his family farm in the economically depressed north to work in a Johannesburg gold mine, where he encounters the social problems and harsh living conditions that arise from racial and economic oppression. Xuma is characterized as naïve and good-natured, and he is often confused by the behaviors and attitudes of the city people he meets. The lack of economic possibilities up north sends Xuma to the city, where he encounters desperately poor and depressed people, whose need for money keeps them in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. Though Xuma comes to the city to make an honest living, the white supremacist policies of the South African government will bar him from ascending the social and economic ladder, no matter how hard he works.
