ABSTRACT
The lead character on whom Tsotsi focuses is a gangster, but although his and Anna's social circumstances could hardly be more different, their inner psychological worlds are similar. Gangsters have for decades been endemic, so common that they became known in township slang as tsotsi said to be a corruption of the term 'zoot-suit'. In reference to the young men's fashionable clothes that as long ago as the 1950s they wore as a menacing sign of power and prosperity. In the terminal concourse Tsotsi scopes the crowds and spots a complacent businessman purchasing from a vendor's stall a colourful scarf to take home to his woman. Without pausing, Tsotsi races out into the night where the dark is pierced by thunder and lightning. The latest flashback experienced by Tsotsi is a further symptom that the psychological movement between conscious and unconscious states has opened up a space for him to begin grieving over his loss.
