The horror of living under apartheid as a black person is apparent from the first chapter in Mathabane’s book, in which he describes his mother fleeing in terror from the Peri-Urban police and the police harassing him as a young boy. He and his family live in complete terror of the police, and they are also not permitted to live a life of decency or fairness. What they can do is limited by the rules of white Africa, and the author, incredulous, asks his mother at a young age why blacks have to listen to white rules. From an early age, he senses the unfairness and arbitrary nature of living under the white rules.

He documents how apartheid drives blacks to make choices such as living as prostitutes, as some young boys do in Alexandra. He also shows the way living under this system wears down his father, who increasingly turns to gambling and drinking, as do others around him. His father is almost a ghost by the time his son leaves for America—a gaunt figure angered and weakened by living as a black man under apartheid.