A Child Called Freedom

by Carol Lee

From the author of To Die For : two contrasting South African childhoods. After thirty years, Carol returns to South Africa. Freedom, an African boy of twelve appears, and throws into relief the stark differences in their upbringings, along with some similarities.

Genres: Africa

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 23, 2006

About the author

39 books in one year. The real mystery is who wrote these books?

Reviews

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going to Soweto then, or now though, there is a puzzle in the buildings themselves and in their lay-out. Why did a government which oppressed blacks give them detached and semi-detached houses when it would have been cheaper to build in terraces? Why did they allow a lot of ground around these houses and the space for such broad streets? Yes, the buildings were called matchbox houses, set in predictable rows of two, three and four-roomed dwellings: small rooms, with bare concrete floors, as if as one inhabitant said, for animals. But it would still have been less expensive to build in narrow adjacent blocks.

Buried in the documents, a short answer in a specification to the architects: the roads were to be wide enough to allow a tank to make a U-turn. The distance between houses was to deprive people of cover as they moved from one to another. They were to be aligned to give a good firing line. Local people were to be easily picked off. (61)

A Child Called Freedom is three stories in one: first, the story of the titular Freedom, a boy Lee met on a trip to South Africa. Second, the story of the Soweto uprising of 1976. And third, Lee's own narrative of learning more about South Africa.

I was by far least interested in that last narrative. It ended up feeling a lot like filler, because although she has a connection to the African continent (having spent time in boarding school in Eastern Africa as a child), her story is mostly not relevant to the story. It's her narrative choice, of course, but I'd have preferred to spend that time with people (or a single person) who experienced the Soweto uprising.

That said, there's good information about the uprising for those of us who didn't learn about it in school. The short version is that black students staged a march to protest the use of Afrikaans in their schools (Afrikaans being the bitter icing on a bitter, bitter cake). Police fired on the crowd, and more than a hundred (conservative estimate) people were killed and a thousand injured. Reportage from the massacre helped turn the tide of international opinion of apartheid.

As for Freedom's story...Freedom was a child growing up in deep poverty in Soweto, living with his brother and their father, who struggled to find consistent work. After meeting them, Lee committed to providing school expenses and some basic living expenses so that the boys could have a better shot at life. There's a limit to how much of his story we really get, though, because mostly what Lee had access to was what she saw and what her friends saw. I'd have loved to have a more in-depth portrait of Freedom's father and his life, for example, or of other adults in the neighbourhood.

The act of offering financial support sounds so complicated. Lee's goal was basically 'keep them in school', which meant things like ensuring they were adequately fed...and it's a necessary thing, but it also wasn't help that let the family be independent or self-sufficient. This isn't criticism: it's way too complicated a situation for me to be able to say ____ would have been better. But it very much leaves me wanting to have seen the situation broken down / analysed a bit more.

[Davis Haguma]

A moving book. Have your hankie nearby.

[Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great potential; considering that not a great deal has been written about the 1976 Soweto Uprising. One would think that so much would be available on a point in South African history that is regarded as so pivotal. Sadly so much is lost because of the lack of freedom of press and the hard stance placed on by the then oppressive government. To confuse the matter only further, today we have more people and political factions claiming reward and more when they had no involvement whatsoever; well highlighted in the book.

The author deals out a few hard punches that shall leave some feeling cornered. To her credit she hands these out to all quarters. Though that would have been my first impression. Later one begins to suspect otherwise. Both black and white are accused of prejudice and wrong doing (not incorrectly), but ironically her own deep-set prejudice raises its head. Or does she merely feel her form of prejudice is justified? Is that not how all prejudice is justified by the perpetrator? Everyone else is wrong, but not me!

With the amount of research, interviews and material the author allegedly gathered, which Lee makes mention of several times, one would expect the book to be brimming with facts and new insights into the subject matter. But for one or two beautifully written chapters, this does not become the case. Great potential… but sadly the author digresses further and further as the book continues into a self-congratulatory discovery of narcissism. Did life deal her such a raw hand that she must feel the constant need to cast metaphorical medals on her chest? And do we need to be dragged along for this? Sadly it takes away completely whatever good was set down on paper on the original subject matter.

[Katherine Howell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book irritated me in a similar way to how The White Masai did. Very interesting and moving subject matter, but the author annoyed me for the following reasons...
1. the book is written in the present tense
2. it offends me that she feels the need to comment on every occasion when someone tells her she's doing a good thing by the family she's helping. Clearly she's doing a good thing - why does she need to harp on about it??
3. it offends me more that she seeks to compare the difficulties of her childhood (belonging to a relatively WELL OFF family who happens to move around a bit) to those experienced by Freedom and Andile in Soweto (which include extreme poverty, no mother, a father who is clearly mentally unwell).
Still, it does make me want to read more about South Africa...