Cry, The Beloved Country - Crime And Injustice And The Breakdown Of A Society

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young people break the law, and he adds “But it has not suited him to build something in the place of what is broken.”(55). Arthur Jarvis reaches the same conclusion. He writes, “The old tribal system was a . . . moral system. Our natives today produce criminals and prostitutes not because it is their nature, but because their simple system of order and tradition has been destroyed.”(177). This is illustrated in the fates of Gertrude and Absalom. Gertrude went to Johannesburg in search of her husband who had gone but never come back, a frequent experience of those who go to Johannesburg. It is as if whole families have been lost, sucked into the anonymous life of the city and the life of crime that they’d soon lead once their options within the cities grew too thin to hold.
We are, by nature, afraid of the unknown, and this fear governs peoples’ lives in a society made precarious and uncertain by social injustice. For, as Msimangu says, “It is fear that rules this land” (56) Fear. ...

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