Although she plays no direct role in the events that inspired the novel, Mandisa is undeniably Mother to Mother's most important character. She narrates the story herself, giving us a window not only into her backstory, but also into her personality and thought processes.

A black South African woman now in her mid-thirties, Mandisa has lived her entire life under the system of apartheid (and most of it in the segregated community of Gugultu). Through flashbacks, we learn that Mandisa was an intelligent, obedient, and somewhat sheltered girl who consistently did well in school and who had never had a boyfriend before she began seeing China. Even then, she continued to pride herself on being a "good girl" who would not sleep with a man before marriage (97). She is thus shocked and dismayed when she becomes pregnant anyway, and the experience of being first a teenage mother and then a resented and abandoned wife noticeably embitters her. Where she had once been hopeful about leaving Guguletu and making a better life for herself, Mandisa is now resigned to her lot in life, and irritated by what she sees as the younger generation's foolish and counterproductive attempts to change South African society: "One student leader publicly announced, 'We wish to make it clear to the government that we are tired of sitting without teachers in our classes.