Agency and the danger of being used

Agency and the danger of being used names a central ethical problem in the novel: a person may possess a capacity or identity that is not itself wrong, yet lose moral freedom when others decide how to deploy it. The distinction becomes decisive for Thobela Mpayipheli, whose violent past cannot simply be denied, and for Vincent Radebe, whose official vocation and good intentions do not excuse his failures to judge and act. In the confrontation with Captain Tiger Mazibuko, the same problem takes physical form: anger can become an instrument in someone else’s hands, unless the person feeling it stops to choose.

Capacity, Identity, and Choice

Thobela’s account to Zatopek van Heerden begins from disillusionment: people disappoint him, and each disappointment reveals weakness not only in others but in himself. He describes this recognition as painful and exhausting, and says that he is tired of seeing weakness, pain, and evil in people and in himself. The reflection prepares a distinction between accepting the truth about one’s nature and surrendering responsibility for one’s actions. His answer is not to claim that he has become a different person, but to ask what his abilities are used for and who gets to decide.

He acknowledges that he had recently felt alive for the first time in a long while, doing something meaningful with satisfaction. His immediate response had been guilt, as though that renewed purpose cancelled the meaning of Miriam Nzululwazi and Pakamile. After thinking it through, he reaches a different conclusion: “It is not what I am that is wrong. It is what I use it for. Or let it be used for.” He identifies his mistake as allowing other people to decide, then insists, “But no more. No more.” The repeated refusal marks a change in the source of authority over his actions. He does not disown his capacities; he claims responsibility for their use, including the danger that he might again let another person or cause direct them.

Radebe’s Official Duty and Moral Judgment

Vincent Radebe’s written admission offers a contrasting account of agency under institutional authority. He says that he chose his career after studying at the University of the Witwatersrand because he genuinely wanted to contribute positively to the country. Inspired by Nelson Mandela’s vision, he hoped to help build the rainbow nation and believed that the Presidential Intelligence Unit offered him that opportunity. His account therefore does not present his original purpose as cynical. Instead, it shows how dedication to an institution can coexist with a failure to examine what its actions demand of others.

Radebe admits that he abducted Miriam Nzululwazi’s six-year-old son, Pakamile, kept him overnight, and later handed him to personnel of the Cape Times, undermining an official operation. He states that he acted alone and does not seek to involve anyone else. In his mitigation, he recognizes that zeal can blind people to their faults, and that protecting the state and democracy may involve difficult decisions that negatively affect civilians. But he cannot accept that national security, however important, justified the means used against Thobela and later Miriam. His unease concerns not only the outcome but the process by which he allowed institutional purpose to override his judgment of right and wrong.

He calls himself negligent where he should have been diligent, regrets his part in Miriam’s death, and particularly regrets failing to protest more strongly through official channels. He identifies his greatest weakness as doubting his own moral judgment. The admission thus does not erase his responsibility by attributing events to the institution: he accepts his own acts, while naming the pressure and assumptions that helped make them possible. His statement that he is not suited to the career, and never was, reframes the problem as a mismatch between the work’s demands and his capacity to resist its abuses. Whether that recognition can undo the damage is left distinct from the fact that he has finally spoken against the means used.

Anger as an Instrument

The confrontation between Thobela and Captain Tiger Mazibuko gives the concept a direct, urgent test. Mazibuko threatens to find and kill Thobela once the data is no longer important. They face each other; Thobela feels Mazibuko’s hatred and the pull of his own fighting blood. Instead of answering only with force, he asks, “The question you must ask, Mazibuko, is whether there is more in you than just the anger you feel. What is left if that is gone?” The question does not deny Mazibuko’s anger or the threat between them. It challenges the idea that anger exhausts his identity.

Thobela then asks whether Mazibuko is being used, and whether others are using the rage that is eating him. He points to the possibility of change: a new administration, system, or era could make Mazibuko’s present usefulness temporary. His comparison is blunt: “They are using you, Mazibuko. Like a piece of equipment.” In this framing, the danger is not simply that Mazibuko may be commanded. It is that his anger may narrow his sense of choice until he mistakes another person’s purpose for his own. Thobela’s appeal asks him to imagine a self that remains when the rage and its immediate use are gone.

A Choice, Not a Guaranteed Conversion

The scene makes the danger tangible when Mazibuko’s hand moves to the bulky shape beneath his jacket. Janina Mentz calls to him, and Thobela warns that he is not alone and would be dead before he could raise the gun. The gesture exposes the immediate stakes: the choice Thobela urges is not abstract reflection but whether Mazibuko will act on a weapon at that moment. Thobela repeats, “Don’t let them use you,” and Mazibuko drops his hand, speechless. Mentz then asks where the hard disk is. The pause in violence is real, but it does not establish that Mazibuko has abandoned his loyalties or renounced violence permanently.

Mazibuko turns away and walks toward the exit. Thobela recognizes something in his posture, then tells him quietly, “You have two choices in life. You can be a victim. Or not.” The phrasing gives agency a stark, limited form: not freedom from pressure, history, or danger, but the possibility of refusing to let those forces determine the next act. The novel does not make that possibility an easy escape from consequence. As Thobela sees Pakamile, the emotion of the moment threatens to overwhelm him, bringing his own vulnerability into the same scene as his appeal to Mazibuko.

The Concept’s Ethical Stakes

Across these moments, agency is neither a claim that people can remake themselves at will nor an excuse that institutions, anger, or past experience remove responsibility. Thobela’s insistence that what matters is what he does with what he is makes self-knowledge a precondition of choice. Radebe’s admission shows the cost of distrusting one’s own moral judgment when official purposes demand compliance. Mazibuko’s lowered hand shows that another course can become possible in an instant, while the unanswered question of what he will do afterward preserves the uncertainty of change.

The three cases also distinguish being influenced from being reduced to an instrument. Radebe recognizes that his commitment to public service became entangled with actions he could not justify; Mazibuko is warned that his rage may serve a purpose beyond his own; Thobela, having once allowed others to decide how his capacities would be used, now asserts that decision as his responsibility. The concept therefore joins freedom to accountability: refusing to be used does not make a person innocent of past harm, but it can make the next choice genuinely his.