The Purse is Mine is a short story about two friends Akufani and Vusi who work as street robbers. Akufani mugs people to give money to his gold-digger girlfriend, Thandi. At Park Station, Akufani tried to steal the purse of a woman but he was discovered. When he escaped the chase, he saw an old man and robbed him but the police caught Akufani. When they walked to the man with the purse the man denied that he ever saw the purse while Akufani became happy. At the charge office when the police opened the purse, there was cocaine and ten of dagga inside.
The story begins when the two friends, Akufani and Vusi are chatting about their job as robbers and they had different opinions on the matter because Vusi wanted to stop robbing people and Akufani did not want this. This introduction of the story prepares the reader for an exciting atmosphere and exciting journey of the young street robber throughout the rest of the story.
The story is situated in an unknown city while the events take place in different places such as the metro train, Park Station, the street, and other places. The environment is not described in detail and the author focuses on the atmosphere and the events.
The main character of the story is Akufani. The author does not describe the protagonist in terms of how he looks but the reader gets a detailed description of his personality through his reactions and his thoughts. Akufani does not care about anything but his gold-digger girlfriend and this is the reason behind his robberies.
The narrator of the story is an outsider who is not connected to the events in any way but rather tells the story from an outsider’s perspective. There are active conversations as well between the characters of the story. The story takes place in an unknown city somewhere. The events in the story take place within one day or a couple of hours. There are no parallel plots in the story.
The events take a different direction at the turning point in the story which is when Akufani is caught by the police after he robbed the old man’s purse. The story ends by illustrating Akufani getting into a more serious problem than robbing people just because of his greediness.
The language is modern and somewhat youth street language. For example, at the beginning of the story Akufani was telling Vesu about money and girls and said “Nowadays, money can buy true love, my bra”.
The message that the author tries to deliver is about greediness and getting into problems. This can lead to more serious problems.