Absalom Kumalo

“All roads lead to Johannesburg. If you are white or if you are black they lead to Johannesburg. If the crops fail, there is work in Johannesburg. If there are taxes to be paid, there is work in Johannesburg. If the farm is too small to be divided further, some must go to Johannesburg. If there is a child to be born that must be delivered in secret, it can be delivered in Johannesburg.” Cry, the Beloved Country pg. 83

The author (what a handsome fellow, if I do say so myself) describes in wonderful detail the bustling lives of people living in Johannesburg, and so included in this picture is the skyline of the city. There is so much movement and life the great city, as is depicted by Stephen Kumalo in chapter 4. Reading about the city of Johannesburg, you get a lot of emotion from the different characters who experience it. From Stephen Kumalo, you get confusion and sadness, from John Kumalo you get empowerment and boldness, and from Absalom, you get wonder, which later leads to greed, and then to fear. 

Absalom Kumalo left his life and his home valley of Ndotsheni for the great and wild city of Johannesburg. This demonstrates the importance of the land. The land can sustain life, or it can take it away if one doesn’t do anything about it. Absalom was forced to leave by the lack of arid land to farm in the hopes that he could find a better life somewhere else. 

Today, there are similar circumstances around the world of people being forced from what they call home, including in South Africa. There is a news article about Human Rights in South Africa, and although things are very different now than they were when Absalom would have been alive, there is still the issue of people being forced from their homes, albeit this time for different reasons. This article talks about immigrants being forced from their homes due to violence of South Africans who dislike them “taking” up land. This also addresses another topic of focus— The effects of fear.