Quotes about South Africa

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

Friends, comrades and fellow South Africans. I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all! I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.

I remembered seeing the lines of people who had waited for hours and hours to vote in the first democratic election in South Africa in 1994. The lines snaked on for miles. I remember wondering at the time, as U.S. voter turnout was hovering under forty percent, how long that sense of joy and appreciation for the right to vote would last and whether there was any way to revive it in America among those who have never been denied the right to vote.

And I'm part of the generation of South Africans who feel we're lucky to be alive.

If we'd lived in England or America we'd have told stories abut our lives and nobody would have called it protest theatre. But the reality of South Africa was the arrests and detentions and oppression - we could not escape that, so we decided to take it on.

Islamic fundamentalism in its activist manifestation is bad news. Religious fundamentalism in general is bad news. We know about religious fundamentalism in South Africa. Calvinist fundamentalism has been an unmitigated force of benightedness in our history.

I had to look at white people as fellow South Africans and fellow partners in building a new South Africa.

We haven't got those dreams: 'I wish to become doctor or a lawyer.' Black people in South Africa have been barred in doing anything that would articulate their cause.

The reason is that as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, in this time, it is not. It is my bussines, mine alone. 'This place being what?' 'This place being South Africa

Moer and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth in South Africa.

'Sizwe' is the beginning of protest theatre; 'Nothing But The Truth' is post-apartheid South Africa.

Oh, 1994, April 27. There won't be a day like that ever again. I mean, the sky was blue, with a blueness that had never been there before.