The story centres around Dikeledi, a young girl in the independent homeland of Transkei, one of the Bantustans of the former apartheid era in South Africa. The Sotho tribe is in the minority in this area and culture still plays a very big role in the villages. Education is not a priority for most of the people there, so when Dikeledi meets and falls in love with a youth in high school, she is confused by his ambitions to study further and go to university. They marry despite the fact that her husbands mother hates her, mainly due to the fact that Dikeledi is not traditionally considered beautiful, comes from a poor home and her family is not known in the village, neither is she a relative. Apartheid laws ensure that, even when Dikeledis husband wants to take her with him to Johannesburg, without valid documents, it is near impossible for her to live with him, and she has to endure her mother-in-laws abuse.