Surfeit because it means an excessive amount of something which CAN be good.
I think the theme is the cruelty and sometimes the inmorality of racist acts and activism .Growing up in this Apartheid era affected the author in such a way that she used The light of Ghandi´s lamp to express how unfair this world was with black people and continues to be. Being equal, having equal rights or seeking to have them should not be a reason to be put in jail.The girl´s sister is arrested because she is part of an anti- apartheid group and she participated in protests. At first she thinks it is wrong to have the intention to overthrow a government but then understands , with her sister in prison, that the only thing people are fighting for is equal rights.
An independent clause expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence, as opposed to a dependent one.
