Here are some ideas to help you plan your essay. Don’t start with lengthly ‘general’ introductions. These don’t help. Go straight into the essay, a statement usually works. Think about SEED (you used this in English!)

Use key terms to enhance your answer!

1. Think about the train station where we first meet Tsotsi and his gang. They are targeting a man with an envelope of money. The man is clearly what South African’s describe as a ‘black-diamond’. How does he show his new found wealth? Why does Tsotsi target him? Interestingly enough, when the man is stabbed, he is left alone on the subway. What does this say about the black community regardless of his money and status?

2. What about the commuter train? What percentage of black and white people do we see at the train station?

3. Talk about when we first see the slums of Soweto where Tsotsi lives. How does Gavin Hood portray this area? Think about the lighting used, what Tsotsi home looks like and what he first uses as a nappy for the child. Investigate how this is juxtaposed with the city – we often see Tsotsi walking away from the city. Earlier in the film he walks away from it on the train tracks and later on he stands on top of it on scrub-land.

4. There are common themes of disease and disabilities in Tsotsi – describe some of these ideas and how they make comments on the health system.

5. Comments on the economy are made in the film – take a look at how the buildings are shown by dominating the Johannesburg landscape and perhaps look at how consumerism is represented in the form of the shopping bag Tsotsi holds his baby in.

6. We only see one white person in Tsotsi and we see two rich black South Africans (Pumla and John). The colour of their skin is lighter than that of Tsotsi and his gang. What does this say about the separation and population of South Africa?

7. Think about the deep, cultural understanding of black South Africa – shown through the use of Afrikaan music and the organic terrain of South Africa in the past (shown on the babies wall).

APARTHEID WAS A SYSTEM OF LEGAL SEGREGATION ENFORCED ON SOUTH AFRICANS FROM THE 40’S TO THE 90’S

Around 80% of the South African population is black and 20% are white.

There are eight million black South Africans with an adequate income and at least 20 million poor. one in four does not get enough to eat.

Apartheid laws and policies affected all aspects of the citizen’s life, especially the health sector.

APARTHIED CAUSED MANY BLACK, COLOURED AND ETHNIC PEOPLE TO FLEE TO LIVE IN THEIR OWN AREAS OF SOUTH AFRICA - THIS IS HOW THE SLUMS DEVELOPED.

APARTHEID HAS BEEN CALLED ‘APART-HATE’ BY MANY SOUTH AFRICANS.

THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS IN SOUTH AFRICA ARE GROWING WIDELY IN SOUTH AFRICA THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS ARE CALLED ‘BLACK DIAMONDS’.

study by South Africa’s Institute for Race Relations found that the numbers living on less than $1 a day rose from 1.9m in 1996 to 4.2m in 2005.

MANY SOUTH AFRICANS BELIEVE THAT ‘THE POOR OR GETTING POORER AND THE RICH ARE GETTING RICHER’.