Mehring
Rich South African tycoon whose wife left long since escape the intensifying disconnection between them and whose son has little interest in him. He purchase a 400-acre farm primarily for the purpose of turning it into a dependable secret romantic hideaway to be with his mistress, but more recently took a powder. He is as little informed about the black laborers working the farm as he is about anything else. He’s rich enough and not repulsive enough to draw the attention of the women at the dinner parties he seems to always get invited to despite the fact that he seems quite curiously ignorant of many of those topics which are standard far for party small talk. In other words, Mehring is a man of power in charge of a chunk of land going to waste because he neither knows nor wants to learn much about the people he relies upon to keep him popular at parties. He is, in essence, the personification of white rule of overwhelming black South Africa.
Antonio Mancebo
Antonia is Mehring’s mistress who is cheating on her college professor husband who is just as often out of town as he is at home. Unlike Mehring, Antonia is more than aware of the political situation around her; she takes part in demonstrations against Apartheid and counts among her actual friends and acquaintances many of those suffering from the racial segregation of that system. She is also insightful enough to recognize Mehring’s vain and fruitless attempts to transform his farm from what it should be into something that he would will it to be. Ultimately, her decision to leave South Africa is as much a rejection of its politics as it is a rejection of Mehring though, of course, both well be the same thing.
Jacobus
The black employee who is the real manager of Mehring’s farm. He had already been working there long before Mehring bought and is fully expected to be there long after Mehring is out of the picture. As a result of watching owners come and watching owners go, the transition of titled steward has taught him well how to handle the peculiarities of working for men who are profoundly more ignorant about every aspect of the property than he is. He treats Mehring as Mehring expects to be treated when he’s around—like an uneducated stooge just happy to have a job. When Mehring is nowhere to be scene, Jacobus suddenly becomes both articulate and manipulative of those beneath his stature.
Terry
The estranged teenage son of Mehring is on the surface much less conservative than his father, but as he continues to drift farther from his father it raises the question of whether his political view is reactionary in a different sense. He is aware of left-wing political movements and is fully open to exploring sexuality that places no absolute restrictions on the gender. His primary contact with his father’s black employees on the farm is furtively donating his own clothing to them. Eventually, the real extent of the space between father and son is demonstrated by Terry’s willingness to put a substantial inheritance in jeopardy by running away from to Namibia with hopes of living with mother in America.
The Dead Body
The novel commences with the discovery of the body of an unidentified black beaten to death and dumped on Mehring’s farm. The white police view another unknown casualty of racist oppression as far down on the list of priorities and so the body is allowed to remain unburied and unmoved, a festering reminder to the black employees of their place in the society of Apartheid.
