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THE POWER OF ONE A list of the native races of South Africa;
Kafir, Zulu, Basuto, Bechuana, Pondo, Fingo, Griqua, Damara, Koranna,
Bushman and Hottentot. The almost universal language of the South African
natives is Bantu, of which the Kaffir group has four subdivisions, Xosa,
Zulu, Tabele, Mfengu. In the 1680s many Dutch, German and French. Years later in the 1800s the English arrived and fought for control of the land. The English did gain control of the land by the late 1800s but lost it by the mid 1900s. They helped establish a society in which they were superior and the blacks were inferior. They did not give a name to this society of segregation though. The Afrikanners did that when in 1948 the system of racist behaviour became known as Apartheid. Character ListP.K.(or Peekay) the boy Geel Peit the boxing instructor in the labor
camp
Mother = an English
woman Nanny = was a
Zulu mother Tonderei son of
Nanny and friend to P.K. Dabula Manzi
Zulu shaman Masibindi = chicken Doctor von Vollensteen = a concert pianist of German descent. Jaapi Botha = leader of the boys in the boarding
school. Bormann = Nasty prison guard who picked on Peit. Gideon Dumas (Black boxer from Alexandra) Maria Morais = girlfriend of Peekay in high school years. Mr. Morais = a leader in the Apartheid regime. Professor = Headmaster at the English boarding school. Owner of Boxing
Club Meriam = the
wife-to-be of Dumas, a budding teacher of English to her tribe members. PK's father dies, a drought comes and animals die. His mom has a breakdown. Peekay must go to a boarding school, run by Afrikaaners, who want to push out the English and suppress the blacks. He is mistreated there and considered the enemy. In 1896 the Boer War broke out in South Africa between the English and the Afrikaaners. English locked up 26 000 Afrikaaners in concentration camps. Terms: Joshua, 9:20 The
Afrikaner teacher in the boarding school claimed that this passage supports
racism. It does not, he twists it to mean this. Dululu Manzi (shaman) Masibindi (name
of chicken: mother courage)
Japi Berth (the
boarding school bully) killed
Peekay’s chicken and then tried to kill him. PK's mother died while he was in boarding school. Doc says the
brain has two functions: as a reference library, and as a creator of
original thought (creativity). You
may get fed up with facts in
school, but in the outdoors all of the answers to your questions are in
nature if you know how to ask and where to look. Nature teaches cooperation. English arrest
Doc. The Afrikanners saw him
as a perfect example of German culture.
Peekay brings Doc cactus wrapped in tabacco leaves. Peekay has free access to the camp
to be with Doc, because the Afrikaaners respect him so much. Doc hooks up the
boy with a boxing trainer, named Geel Peit. (a criminal, thief). Kaffir is a
derogatory word for blacks. Geel Peit gets
the tobacco leaves from the bucket left by the piano. Geel Peit has to
eat manure. The tribes
consider the boy the “Rainmaker,” the one who has the ability to cool
things down, to calm the people. The
tribes sing to honor Peekay because he is fair to all. Doc says “We
must take was is bad and make it good.” Geel Peit : “Myth
gives people courage to do what they would never do.” Nyazulu = the
rainmaker Pete suggests that Doc and PK write a concert to allow the prisoners to sing. PK writes how the guards “run this way, that way, they are afraid, they are cowards.” The tribes meet and begin to sing after PK “translates” the kommandant’s comments. “Little defeat big, when little is smart, first with the head, then with the heart.” This is what Peit taught PK about thinking his way through life. Sergeant Bormann
kills Pete. Time passes and PK
is next seen in the English boarding school.
There he earns a scholarship to Oxford, and he also meets Maria. Justice was served; the inmates
killed sergeant Bormann (the man who killed Pete) by hanging him in Pete’s
cell. “Any
ideology that needs to attack the thing that least threatens it will no
outlive one generation.” (English Prof at boarding school) Maria’s father
is the leader of the Nationalist Party, the party that made the Apartheid
system. Father: Until
your people caught him and hanged him PK: You mean the
English, I’m a South African · We’re
all South Africans, just from separate tribes · Some
think that the problems can be solved if we stop thinking of SA in terms of
separate tribes. · Separation
of things is not coincidental. Do
you think that a Zulu wants to see his culture, his sense of identity
replaced by some else’s? any
more than I do mine? · No,
but I don’t think he wants being a Zulu to mean he is denied the same
rights as you and I enjoy. · Laws
define rights · I
agree sir! But do they always
define justice. · Justice
is only relative to who is in charge. · Quite
true sir. But perhaps how long
they stay in charge is relative to how well they dispense that justice. No? · If
you want to impress me with your intellect, don’t do it by espousing
liberal ideology procured in English private schools. · For
the record sir, I procured my ideas long before I began English private
school · From
an English expert on race relations, no doubt. · Acutally,
sir, from a German expert on cacti. Gideon Dumas,
the black boxer, fought PK in the township called Alexander. Maria goes with PK to Alexandra. A woman, the wife to be of the
black boxer, Dumas, gives Maria her blanket. Botha became a
police agent who spied on PK. He
beat up PK and others in the gym. PK
is accecpted to Oxford on a full scholarship. He plans to pick up Maria at the
end of the month when he finishes school. They plan to go to England together. The regime arrests the head trainer of the gym because
he allowed race mixing in the ring. PK
trains with Gideon Dumas. Gideon
gets PK to agree to found a school to teach the blacks English. At the church, during a secret class, the police arrive. They kill Maria. PK and Gideon flee to England. 1. What was the name of the system imposed by the South African government in 1948 to separate from other races and keep the whites in power? 2. What countries colonized or settled in South Africa from the 1600s onwards? 3. From where do Afrikaaners trace their roots? 4. Why did Afrikaaners not like the English? 5. When the second World War broke out in Germany, why did many Afrikaaners support Hitler? 6. Why did the English and Afrikaaners feel superior to the native Africans? 7. What does a shaman do in a tribe? 8. What is the role of the rainmaker in this story? 9. Name two ways that PK helped the tribes? 10. What happened to Apartheid after this movie was made? |