A closer look into the lives of an impoverished black society, under the Apartheid regime, and their daily struggles in trying to make ends meet.
Protagonist Xuma is a young man from a small rural town who moves to Johannesburg in order to get a job on the mines. He is offered a place to stay by Leah, a shebeen owner who sells alcohol illegally.
Xuma falls in love with Leah’s niece, Eliza, who is more of an assimilationist in spite of the racial discrimination the mine workers and tenants are subjected to everyday.
Mine Boy explores the difficulties and racism experienced by black mine workers during South Africa’s dark historical period and is partly reminiscent of the Marikana massacre regarding the protesting miners’plight.
