Analyse af 'The Toilet' af Gcina Mhlope

The life of the black South Africans during apartheid wasn't very easy, and especially not for the young black girl in this short story by Gcina Mhlope. She tells us how lonely and depressing it was for her not to have anything that made her happy in Johannesburg. She had no happiness in life, just until a “Non-European” toilet in a park becomes her safe place, where she gets to be herself and allows her to have new perspectives on things she has experienced, learnt and thought about.

Mholo is a young black African girl with no education, who lives hidden in her sisters’ back room, while she’s working in Orange Grove as a domestic worker. She doesn’t have any friends in Johannesburg, and therefore she spends all weekdays in her sister’s back room, reading old magazines. Mholo seems to regret some of her decisions in life as she says ‘’Maybe I should have done something like teaching or nursing as my mother wished’’ (p. 22, l. 2). Mholo doubts her earlier decisions, she feels misunderstood by her sister and mother and she only wants to be heard and taken seriously. The past isolation between her and her family, is why she is so reserved and keeps her written dreams to herself. She dreams of being an actress and she loves writing, but her dreams are discouraged by her mother and sister. It caused her to be ashamed of her dreams and even herself. That made her shy and submissive, but inside she is just bursting to show her authentic self to her mother and sister and this is what makes her restless with ambition.