Overview of “The Road to Alexandra”
Characters
Johannes – the main character and narrator (protagonist)
Mother
Father
Policemen (antagonists)
Little sister - Flora
Little brother
Other villagers
Setting
Alexandra, South Africa
Plot Summary
Upon hearing rumors of a raid by the Peri-Urban (black) police, Johannes (a 5year-old boy) and his family are scared. When the police show up at their home a
little after midnight, Johannes is extremely frightened and wets himself. The black
policemen scream and pound on the door, until Johannes finally unlatches it and
lets them inside. They kick and beat him until he is bloody and nearly
unconscious. Although they repeatedly ask Johannes where his parents are hiding,
he refuses to tell them and they search through their home, destroying everything
in their paths.
The policemen find Johannes’s little sister in the bedroom, and then the father
hiding naked under the bed. They ask the father where his wife (the mother) is,
and he lies and tells them that she is at work. The father is asked to present his
black book of paperwork; the police note that several of the passes and taxes are
not in order and have not been paid. As they continue to embarrass and harass
him, the police remark that he should be working on a farm instead of in the city.
They take him away for his supposed crimes.
Curious, Johannes follows his father and the policemen outside, only to see
hundreds of men and women (some clothed, some still naked) being carted off in
handcuffs by both black and white policemen, and children crying out for their
family members who are being taken away from them.
Johannes suddenly remembers that his mother is still hiding at home. He hears her
voice from a small locked wardrobe. He desperately tries to find the key to let her
out, and even asks his mother if he should chop the wardrobe down with an axe.
Finally, he finds it in a crevice of a one of the bricks that supported the bed, and
lets his mother out. She immediately goes about her duties – calming down the
little brother and restoring their home.
The father returns two months later, after doing hard labor on a white man’s
potato farm for his pass crimes.
Lesson
Unfairness of apartheid
Whites had much more power than the blacks