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Section A: Background information

About My Children! My Africa! (p. 4)

Photograph: The playwright Athol Fugard with the characters Thami, Isabel and Mr M on the set of the stage production of My Children! My Africa!. (Credit: Ruphin Coudyzer)

Fill in the blanks below, using your own words wherever possible. The first question relates to the first paragraph (p. 4); the following five questions deal in turn with each of the bullets under “Why study this play today?”.

1. ____________________________ declared a State of Emergency in ____________________________ in order to counter ____________________________ declared by black South Africans. (3)

2.The two ways of opposing an unjust social system like apartheid that this play examines are to ____________________________ and to ____________________________. (2)

3.Studying this play will help ____________________________ to understand how South Africa came to be ____________________________. (2)

4.Three reasons for reading this play are that it is ____________________________, it was written by ____________________________ and it ____________________________. (3)

5.The two-word phrase from the fourth bullet that best expresses the advantage of reading a drama such as this one is ____________________________. (1)

About Athol Fugard (p. 5)

1.List three facts from the second paragraph that suggest that Athol Fugard was unconventional.

•____________________________

•____________________________

•____________________________

(6)

2.Fugard wrote the works listed in this section in the following order: Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972), Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act (1972), Tsotsi (1980) and My Children! My Africa! (1989). Tsotsi differs from the other works listed here in that it was originally written as ____________________________ and was later made into ____________________________. (2)

3.In addition to the three listed here, Fugard also wrote thirty other _________________________________. (1)

(Note: Jerusalema, mentioned in paragraph four in this section, was not written by Fugard, but is a film produced in 2008 by writer/director Ralph Ziman.)

4.We are not told directly why Fugard moved to America in the eighties, but we can assume that it . (2)

What is a drama? (p. 6)

1.Underline any words or phrases in this Merriam-Webster definition of drama that are not included in the definition of drama at the top of p. 6:

“A piece of writing that __________________________________ and is performed _____________________________.” (2)

2.On the other hand, the p. 6 definition mentions __________________________________, which is not included in the Merriam-Webster definition. (1)

3.Here are key features of a drama to add to the notes on drama in your copy of the play:

3.1Literature appears in different genres: prose (novels and short stories), poetry and drama (plays). Drama differs from the others in that living actors in costume tell the story by performing it on a stage for an audience.

3.2For this reason the layout of a written play separates the words the actors speak (the primary text) from the information they or their director might need. Below the title you find the list of characters (the dramatis personae). Their names in bold down the left-hand column indicate who speaks the words opposite.

3.3The playwright hopes to make sure that performances agree with how he or she pictures them and so he or she will add guidelines for

•the setting

•costumes

•lighting

•sound (music or noises),

and will include stage directions in italics, usually in brackets, that tell the actors

•when to appear on stage or leave [enter/exit],

•how they are feeling

•how to say their lines, and

•how the scene moves ahead.

The drama script (p. 6)

1.Distinguish between dialogue and stage directions by underlining the stage directions in this extract from p. 44 of your copy of the play:

All those in favour raise a hand. [Mr M, Thami and Isabel count hands] Seventeen? [Thami and Isabel nod agreement] All those against? [They all count again] Twenty-four? [Reactions from Thami and Isabel] The proposal is defeated by twenty-four votes to seventeen. (4)

2.The following terms are defined on p. 6 of your copy of the play: Setting, Plot, Conflict, Climax and Character. Write each of them next to the paraphrase that corresponds to it in the table below:

Paraphrase	Term
a.The role-players and what we learn about them during the play
b.The events in the story and how they shape the dramatic structure of the play
c.Where and when the story unfolds
d.The struggle between opposing forces
e.The point in a story when the tension reaches a peak

(5)

The drama performance (p. 7)

This section at the top of p. 7 points out that reading the text of a play is very different from watching a performance. The reader has to rely on his or her ____________________________ in order to picture ____________________________ and ____________________________ and to imagine each character’s, ____________________________ and ____________________________. (6)

Important dramatic features of My Children! My Africa! (p. 7)

1.Skim through the play (pp. 41−103) and fill in the number of scenes in each of the acts.

•Act 1: ________________________ scenes

•Act 2: ________________________ scenes (2)

2.In a monologue the character shares his or her ____________________________ with ____________________________, not with ____________________________ . (4)

Historical background to My Children! My Africa! (p. 7)

1.Using the notes on the 3 September 1984 Constitution given here, explain the cartoon at the top of p. 8 by filling in the blank spaces below:

1.1The tri-cameral parliament is likened to ____________________________ in which the spacious bottom floor is ____________________________ while ____________________________ use a ladder to climb through a window into ____________________________. Blacks look on from __________________________________, signifying that _______________________________. (10)

1.2Black South African resistance began with ____________________________, to which the apartheid government responded with ____________________________ and ____________________________. This in turn provoked ____________________________, to fight back. (5)

The State of Emergency (p. 8)

1.The difference between the two states of emergency was that the first affected __________________________________, whereas the second applied to __________________________________. (3)

2.Both states of emergency aimed to prevent people from ____________________________ or ____________________________, to prevent the media from ____________________________ and to neutralise leaders and intimidate other opponents through _________________________________ and ____________________________. (6)

The dawn of democracy (p. 8)

1.The kinds of pressure on the apartheid government to negotiate with the African National Congress (ANC) were ____________________________ from within the country and ____________________________ from the international community. (2)

2.In June 1990 the only thing clouding the dawn of democracy was conflict between ____________________________ and ____________________________ in ____________________________. (3)

3.The ____________________________ was finally lifted across the whole of South Africa ____________________________ months later. (2)

The education crisis of the eighties (p. 9)

Photograph: Cape Town school students demand free and equal education. (Used with permission of the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive, photographer unknown.)

Photograph: Soweto school students protesting against being forced to study in Afrikaans. (Used with permission of the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive, photographer unknown.)

The Bantu Education Act, which was passed in 1953, established a separate and inferior education system for blacks. The resentment this caused in the African community simmered until 1976, when the government decreed that certain subjects were to be taught in Afrikaans. On 16 June 1976 about 20 000 students took to the streets in Soweto in protest. At least 176 of them were killed by the police during the Soweto Uprising itself and more than 400 other people died in the ensuing unrest across the country. Anger at the inferiority of black education flared up again in the school boycotts that provide the context for My Children! My Africa!

1.Unequal government spending and poorly qualified teachers in black schools lay behind _________________________________ on 5 and 6 November 1984 and the _________________________________ in 1985. This in turn led to the establishment of the ____________________________ in 1986. (3)

2.Infrastructure in this context refers to “the stock of fixed capital equipment” in schools. Give four of your own examples of what this refers to.

•__________________________________

•__________________________________

•__________________________________

•__________________________________

(4)

Extract 1: Revealing Mr M’s opinion (p. 10)

1.Choose three of these words for the gaps in the sentence below:

resigned angry anxious frustrated confused

In the first paragraph Mr M sets out feeling _________________________________ at the thought of being late for school. He feels _________________________________ at finding all roads leading to the school are blocked, and ends up feeling ________________________________ as he watches his “world go mad”. (3)

2.In the second paragraph Mr M tells himself to “wait till you wake up”, thus linking the second paragraph to the word ____________________________ in the first paragraph. (1)

3.The children throw ____________________________ at the police vehicles and the police respond by throwing ____________________________ at the children. (2)

Extract 2: Revealing Thami’s opinion (p. 10)

1.Thami’s “head … refuses to remember” dates when ____________________________ or when ____________________________, but instead he remembers dates relating to ____________________________. (1+1+2)

2.He believes that, instead of attending conventional school, “the people” should meet in ____________________________, ____________________________ and ____________________________ in order to remember ____________________________, ____________________________, ____________________________ and _________________________________ that are relevant to the history of _________________________________. (8)

The newspaper report that served as the inspiration for the play (p. 11)

1.It is likely that the youths who knifed and necklaced Anele Myalatya are the same ones who __________________________________. (2)

2.It is also likely that Anele Myalatya thought that ____________________________ was innocent but _____________________________ _____________________________ were criminals. (1+2)

3.According to the youths who killed Anele Myalatya, it is a capital offence to ____________________________. (2)

Fugard’s motivation for writing the play (p. 11)

Consider the implication in the final paragraph in the text box on p. 11 before filling in the spaces in the sentence below.

Fugard intended this play to provide those ____________________________ with the point of view of ____________________________. (4)