how white farmers exploited black workers Charlie Slatter represents the rich cruel settler who farmed with the sjambok This was real in Lessing s Africa Race and Apartheid Experience Lessing grew up in a racially divided world She saw how whites treated blacks as cheap labor In the novel Mary shouts at the black workers She says I will take two and six off the ticket of every one of them that isn t at work in ten minutes The murder of Mary by Moses reflects this tension Lessing writes White civilization which will never never admit that a white person and most particularly a white woman can have a human relationship whether for good or for evil with a black person This is her commentary on apartheid The Grass is Singing reflects Doris Lessing s own life Mary s childhood pain Dick s farm struggles and the racial divide are drawn from her Rhodesian experience Through fiction Lessing tells both her story and the story of colonial Africa