Kumalo is reunited with his sister, Gertrude, and her son,
            in Chapter 6 of this novel that is focussed on pre-apartheid South Africa. When he comes
            to where Gertrude is working, it is clear that she is living as a prostitute and her son
            is uncared for and left to fend for himself. Stephen Kumalo is very harsh with his
            sister and says that she has shamed him and their family. However, he also states his
            intention of taking her and her son back to Ndotsheni to rejoin the tribe and the land
            that is theirs. Note what he says to Gertrude about taking her son back to the
            village:
It
will be better for the child, he said. He will go to a place where the wind blows, and
where there is a school for
him.
Note how this ties in
            with a much larger theme in the novel - Kumalo's attempts to go against the tide of what
            is happening in South Africa and his desire to rebuild the tribe. Consider how this
            chapter ends:
readability="9">
Kumalo himself was light-hearted and gay like a
            boy, more so than he had been for years. One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe
            was being rebuilt, the house and the soul
            restored.
Of course, as
            Stephen and the reader comes to discover, this is false optimism. The difficulties
            facing the rebuilding of the tribe are illustrated by Absalom's murder and Gertrude's
            escape and return to a life of prostitution. Kumalo has much to learn about the
            difficulties facing his people in this new and dangerous South
            Africa.
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