"Nothing satisfies them, in the cities: blacks can sit and drink in white hotels, now, the Immortality Act has gone, blacks can sleep with whites....It's not even a crime any more." (2574). This is a clear example of the way of thinking of the persona in Nadine Gordimer's "The Moment before the Gun Went Off". The persona is probably a white man in Post-Apartheid South Africa and judging from the manner in which he tells the story, most likely a friend of, or at least someone who personally knows, Marais Van der Vyver, the person about whom he tells. The persona tells how Marais, a white South African farmer, accidentally shot a black boy. During this narrative his sympathies toward the Apartheid-regime become apparent. The voice in the story however is clearly against Apartheid in South Africa, which can be derived from the use of irony throughout the story.
             During the persona's narrative in "The Moment before the Gun Went Off", he is not overly consistent or reliable. For example, when he talks about the black boy that has died. In the first quote he talks about the boy as if he was really just Marais' friend to sketch that white and black people can be friends: "[Persona quoting Marais:] 'He was my friend, I always took him hunting with me. 'Those city and overseas people don't know it's true: farmers usually have one particular black boy they like to take along with them in the lands; you could call it a kind of friend, [...]" (2573). However, further on it becomes apparent the boy was not just his friend: "The young black callously shot through the negligence of the white man was not the farmer's boy; he was his son." (2576). This sheds a totally different perspective on the relationship between Marais and the boy, since it was more than just friendship. Therefore, it does not support the persona's statement about friendship between black and white people that well anymore. Thus, he only gives
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