Tsotsi

Chapter 6

The Hunt

Essential Questions for Chapter 6

Three questions sit at the heart of this chapter. Two are old. One is new.

End of Chapter 5

The kill decision would not come. Tsotsi sat in his room, unable to do the one thing he had always done.

A woman walked past carrying a baby. Butcher taunted her, and an idea began to form.

Tsotsi said two words: "Later" and then "Come".

The gang headed into the city -- to Terminal Place.

The Arrival

Tsotsi, Butcher, and Die Aap wait for the shadows to lengthen.

They take the 6:10 special from the township and arrive at Terminal Place at half past six.

Within fifteen minutes, the gang has fractured. Tsotsi has lost the other two in the crowd.

He doesn't care. He has already chosen his victim. And he wants him alone.

The Misstep

"Whatever else you could say or see about him, Morris Tshabalala was not afraid. That is why, when the foot came down on his hand on the pavement of Terminal Place, he had no hesitation in saying in anger…"

A small, almost accidental moment.

Tsotsi steps on the hand of a man crawling on the pavement.

The hand belongs to Morris Tshabalala.

The Choice

Morris swears at Tsotsi for stepping on his hand.

Usually people apologise -- they call him "Little Father".

Tsotsi says nothing and does not move. He doesn't even scowl.

Morris realises he has been seen. And Tsotsi has decided: this is the man.

The Slow Hunt

What follows takes up most of the chapter:

• Morris moves through the streets, slow and dragging.
• Tsotsi follows -- sometimes close, sometimes hanging back in shadow.
• Morris stops at the Bantu Eating House for food.
• Morris realises he is being followed -- and tries to lose Tsotsi.
• Tsotsi briefly loses sight of him and panics.

Fugard slows time almost to a crawl. The chase takes hours.

The Newspaper Seller

Halfway through the hunt, the narrative pauses for a small scene:

A street newspaper seller calls out his headlines.

The voices of the city, the world outside, the politics of the moment -- they all intrude briefly on the silent hunt.

And then the hunt resumes.

The Money

Morris reaches a dark stretch beyond the loading bays.

He gathers his money and places it in the brightest spot of lamplight he can find.

"It lay like a small but lustrous silver spot in the dust."

An offering. A bargain. A plea for life.

The Kick

Tsotsi walks up to the heap of coins.

He looks at them.

And he kicks them flying into the darkness.

Whatever this hunt is, it is not about the money.

The Stones

Morris understands. He starts throwing stones.

His arms, once a labourer's, are stronger now from six years of dragging himself.

He throws hard. He throws with accuracy.

He screams obscenities until his voice cracks.

Morris Tshabalala does not die quietly.

The Cliffhanger

"A few more feet and he was in the final darkness beyond the last light and he knew that he had come to the moment and the place for which the young one had waited so patiently the whole night."

The chapter ends here.

In the darkness. In the silence. Before the meeting.

The Place at Day's End

"The life of the Place begins to decline in the late afternoon… The fluid life of the pavements slows, and thickens like porridge left too long on the fire. Windows are boarded up, doors are locked… The people go home."

A real city space -- a bus terminus, a commercial hub -- but described as a living thing dying down.

"Night is near and night is never safe."

A Brief Note on the Headlines

The newspaper seller's headlines briefly puncture the silence of the hunt.

They locate the novel in a specific apartheid moment: the politics, the violence, the system Tsotsi and Morris both live inside.

The hunt happens in the back streets. The headlines remind us: the back streets are not separate from the country.

Meet Morris

A beggar. A "cripple." A man often pitied, occasionally mocked.

And -- as Fugard insists in the chapter's most striking sentence -- "also a man."

"How Then Did He Measure Himself as a Man?"

"His stature, the extent of his manliness, was not in his body… nor was it in his hope… How then did he measure himself as a man?"

Not in his body -- the body is half-gone.

Not in his hope -- there is even less of that.

So in what?

The Voice of Defiance

"I tell anyman -- anyman I tell you -- I tell go to hell Mister! Go to hell and cook for your black sins!"

Morris's manhood is in his voice.

When others pity him, he tells them to go to hell.

When a prostitute laughs at his money, he screams the word "man" back at her.

He insists on being addressed as what he is: a person who can speak.

The Interior Monologue

"Why does my heart not die for the shame of my life? When we chopped off the heads of fowls in my youth, the bodies ran around a little longer. It is like that with me, only it is my legs that are gone."

Fugard gives us access to Morris's thoughts -- something he has not done for any victim before.

Morris is not just a target. He is a consciousness.

The Want to Live

Morris's despair is real. He has often asked himself: what is there to live for?

And yet --

When he realises Tsotsi is following him, he piles his money in the light.

When that fails, he throws stones.

When that fails, he shouts and swears.

Even half a man -- even a man without hope -- wants to live.

Both "a Man" -- Both "Measured"

Chapter 1, of Gumboot:

"Gumboot was a man. Measured in hope he stood in his shoes tall amongst men…"

Chapter 6, of Morris:

"Morris Tshabalala was his name and he was also a man… How then did he measure himself as a man?"

The same word: measure.

Gumboot is measured by the narrator -- and stands tall in hope.

Morris measures himself -- because hope is gone, and the world has stopped doing it for him.

Side by Side

What the Contrast Reveals

In Chapter 1, the novel showed us what Tsotsi does.

In Chapter 6, the novel shows us what is now at stake when he does it.

Gumboot was a victim. Morris is a person -- because we have been forced to see him as one.

And not only have we been forced to see him…

So has Tsotsi.

Morris as Witness to Apartheid

Both Gumboot and Morris are products of the same system:

A migrant labour economy that takes Black men from their homes, works them in dangerous mines, and discards them when they break.

Gumboot survived the mines and was killed by another product of that system -- the township tsotsi.

Morris survived almost. He was broken by the work but not killed by it. The city he limped into to beg now hunts him.

Then: The Mechanism (Chapter 1)

Gumboot:

• Three details noticed: smile, red tie, money showing.
• Decision made. Roles assigned.
• Die Aap restrains. Butcher kills. Boston takes the money.
• No hesitation. No introspection. No pause.

A clean machine. Tsotsi as operator, not participant.

Now: Something Else (Chapter 6)

Morris:

• No three details. No calculation. Tsotsi stumbles on his hand.
• No gang. Die Aap and Butcher are lost in the crowd.
• Tsotsi follows. Alone. For hours.
• He talks to himself. He apologises to his victim.
• He feels something. He doesn't have a name for it.

The mechanism is gone. What replaces it?

Sympathy

"His new-found sympathy regretted this. It pained him to see the tired and slow way the beggar moved, thinking that he was at last safe. But what could Tsotsi do."

The narrator names it: sympathy.

A word that has never been associated with Tsotsi before.

And yet here it is, attached to him, in the middle of a hunt.

The Body Knows Before the Mind

"His sympathy cut deeper until the time came when it felt as if his feet and his heart were pointing in opposite directions and that no one way was forward for all of him."

A man divided.

Feet still pointing toward the kill.

Heart pointing somewhere else.

The Contradiction

And yet, in the same breath:

"There was no conflict. It wasn't a question of should I or shouldn't I. That didn't exist. He was resigned to the inevitable, watching it unfold as doctors would the last stages of a disease in a patient who is beyond help."

Sympathy -- but no conflict. Feeling -- but no choice.

Tsotsi is a spectator at his own crime.

The Apology

When Tsotsi briefly loses Morris in the streets, he panics, runs back, and finally sees him:

"My man. I nearly lost you. I have found you back. My poor, slow man. I'm sorry. I tell you I'm sorry my poor slow man. But what can I do?"

A hunter apologising to his prey.

"What can I do?" -- the question of a man who no longer believes he has agency.

Pacing

Chapter 1: the hunt of Gumboot takes a page.

Chapter 6: the hunt of Morris takes an entire chapter, and is not even concluded.

Why?

Because the slowness is the meaning. When violence becomes thought, time stretches. When the killer has to feel, the killing becomes long.

Shifting Point of View

For the first time, Fugard moves freely between two minds:

• Tsotsi's interior: the apology, the sympathy, the divided self.
• Morris's interior: the self-measure, the will to live, the realisation he is being followed.

Two consciousnesses, drawn into the same dark stretch of street.

The reader feels both -- and feels the gap between them.

Imagery of Light and Dark

The chapter is structured around light:

• The lamplit pavements of Terminal Place where the hunt begins.
• The lamps spaced "at long intervals" along the loading bays.
• The "lustrous silver spot" of money under the lamp.
• The "final darkness beyond the last light."

The chapter moves from light into darkness, slowly and inexorably.

Violence and Humanity

Chapter 1 answered: a mechanism. Roles, decisions, efficient execution.

Chapter 6 complicates: even when sympathy intervenes, the act of violence has its own momentum.

Feeling is not enough. The hunter feels for his prey -- and keeps walking.

The novel insists: conscience does not automatically translate into action.

Identity and Self-Knowledge

Morris answers directly: identity is the measure a person takes of himself.

Not body. Not hope. Not what the world makes of him.

It is the refusal to be made smaller than one is.

And Tsotsi? Tsotsi has spent his life refusing to take any measure of himself at all.

Dignity Under Oppression

Morris's life is a portrait of dignity preserved in the smallest possible space.

He has lost the mine job, the legs, the future, the family, the home.

He has kept his name, his voice, and his refusal of pity.

In the apartheid city that has reduced him, he insists on the one word: man.

Why Chapter 6 Matters

And to ask: what has happened, between those two pavements, to the man with the knife?

Tracking Questions for Chapter 7

Before We Leave Chapter 6

A man crawls through a darkening street.

A man follows him, apologising under his breath.

Money lies kicked into the dust.

Stones have been thrown, and curses, and a voice has cracked.

The chapter ends in the final darkness, before the meeting.

Sit with it.