it would seem to suggest that Africanness is not a natural state of existence, [but that] it must be performed - Bessie Emery Head

Once a man involves himself with women there's always some kind of retribution. They're the most vengeful creatures on this earth.

I was born on the sixty of July, 1937, in the Pietermaritzburg Mental Hospital, in South Africa. The reason for my peculiar birthplaces was that my mother was white, and she had acquired me from a black man. She was judged insane, and committed to the mental hospital while pregnant. Her name was Bessie Emery and I consider it the only honor South African officials ever did me—naming me after this unknown, lovely, and unpredictable woman."

Hannetjie is just a child and stupidly truthful.