153 quotes found
"Apartheid is as evil, as immoral, as un-Christian, in my view, as Nazism. And in my view, the Reagan administration’s support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil and totally un-Christian, without remainder. (Washington, D.C. 1984)"
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
"I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute — a white skin."
"Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity."
"I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum."
"History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene."
"Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant."
"Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are."
"For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too."
"When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens."
"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights."
"Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems."
"A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons."
"You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them."
"We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil."
"We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death."
"At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: 'Raise your hands!' Then I have said: 'Move your hands,' and I've said 'Look at your hands - different colors representing different people. You are the Rainbow People of God.'"
"It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong."
"There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew."
"Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion."
"Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations."
"South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world."
"[T]here is always the possibility of change. If it happened in South Africa, why can't it happen anywhere?"
"People marched and demonstrated, and the Berlin Wall fell, and communism was ended. People marched and demonstrated, and apartheid ended. And democracy and freedom were born. And now people are marching, and people are demonstrating, because people are saying no to war!"
"The just war theory says you need a legitimate authority to declare and to wage war. Only the United Nations is that legitimate authority. Any other war is immoral. The just war says, “Have you exhausted all possible peaceful means?” And the world says, “No, we haven’t yet!” And any war before you have exhausted all possible peaceful means is immoral. And those who want to wage war against Iraq must know it would be an immoral war."
"You know, those who are going to be killed in Iraq are not collateral damage. They are human beings of flesh and blood. They are children. They are mothers. They are brothers. They are grandfathers. You know what? They are our sisters and brothers, for we belong in one family. We are members of one family, God’s family, the human family. And how can we say we want to drop bombs on our sisters and brothers, on our children?"
"We said no to communism. We said no to apartheid. We said no to injustice. We said no to oppression. And we said yes to freedom, yes to democracy. Now I ask you: What do we say to war? CROWD: No! (February 15, 2003 speaking before a massive rally in New York to oppose the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq)."
"God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven."
"We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low."
"We refuse to be treated as the doormat for the government to wipe its jackboots on."
"(on the US invasion of Iraq) Millions said, “No. Give peace a chance.” ... in order for it to be legitimate, and therefore justifiable, the only authority would have to be the U.N. And when they didn’t get what they wanted from the U.N., they did what they did. We said then, and we keep saying so, not just that it was illegal, it was immoral. And the consequences of it just now — I mean, you have to be — you’ve really got to be blind to say, “Well, yeah, it’s OK. We removed Saddam Hussein.” Why didn’t you say that was the reason for going? Because the world would have said, “No, no, no, no. That isn’t a reason that will be allowable for you to declare war.”.. I’m sad... They tell you a hundred people have been killed, and the United States and its allies are doing that, and they say, “No, no. We targeted that house because our intelligence said so.” Intelligence. The same intelligence that said there were weapons of mass destruction? Please. That’s been done in your name, that mothers and children have been killed. And when you say, “What about the civilian casualties?” they say, “Sorry, our intention was to target insurgents.” And most of us, I think, just shrug our shoulders."
"This family has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider. When Jesus said, "I, if I am lifted up, will draw..." Did he say, "I will draw some"? "I will draw some, and tough luck for the others"? He said, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all." All! All! All! – Black, white, yellow; rich, poor; clever, not so clever; beautiful, not so beautiful. All! All! It is radical. All! Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Bush – all! All! All are to be held in this incredible embrace. Gay, lesbian, so-called "straight;" all! All! All are to be held in the incredible embrace of the love that won’t let us go."
"Isn’t it desperately sad that, at a time when we face formidable problems – poverty, HIV/AIDS, conflict – that the Anglican Communion can invest so much energy on disagreements about human sexuality? A communion that used to boast that one of its distinctive characteristics was something called comprehensiveness, that our communion, the Anglican Church, included just about everybody. Even if you had the most weird theology you could come in, you were allowed. And now we, who used to be held up in admiration by many because of this inclusiveness, are now spending time working out how we can excommunicate one another. God looks on and God weeps. God weeps."
"Isn't it sad, that in a time when we face so many devastating problems – poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict – that in our Communion we should be investing so much time and energy on disagreement about sexual orientation? [The Communion, which] "used to be known for embodying the attribute of comprehensiveness, of inclusiveness, where we were meant to accommodate all and diverse views, saying we may differ in our theology but we belong together as sisters and brothers now seems hell-bent on excommunicating one another. God must look on and God must weep."
"I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama. Do you really think, as some have argued, that God will be saying: "You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. What a pity he's not a Christian"? I don't think that is the case — because, you see, God is not a Christian."
"He has a childlike, boyish, impish, mischievousness. And I have to try and make him behave properly, like a holy man!"
"We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side."
"I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread."
"What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong."
"1994, that was first time, and the first time for Nelson Mandela, and he, too, this extraordinary human being, and the many, many, many, many others. Actually, in a way, you would say white people who had always voted in racially discriminated elections were voting for the first time, voting for the first time in a democratic — truly democratic — election. So, we were all, as it were, on the same page. But it was — I said then, when I was asked, “What is your — how do you describe how you feel?” I said, “Well, how do you describe falling in love? How do you describe red to someone who is totally blind? How do you speak about the glories of a Beethoven symphony to somebody who is deaf? Well, it’s like that. I mean, I’m over the moon. I’m on cloud nine,” as were most of my, if not all of my, compatriots on that day."
"I want to say a big thank you to all of you, especially you beautiful young ones. We oldies have made something of a mess of the world. And we want to say to the leaders who are meeting, look in the eyes of your grandchildren. Climate change is already a serious crisis today. But we can do something about it. If we don’t — if we don’t — hoohoo!, hoho! — there’s no world which we will leave to you, this generation. You won’t have a world. You will be drowning. You will be burning in drought. There will be no food. There will be floods. We have only one world. We have only one world. If we mess it up, there’s no other world. And for those who think that the rich are going to escape — hahaha! — we either swim or sink together. We have one world. And we want to leave a beautiful world for all of this beautiful, wonderful young generation. We, the oldies, want to leave you a beautiful world. And it is a matter of morality. It is a question of justice."
"I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place. I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid. For me, it is at the same level."
"Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can't ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people."
"None of us can say that had I been exposed to the same circumstances and conditions that I wouldn't have turned out the same way. Perpetrators don't have horns, don't have tails, they are as ordinary looking as you and I."
"Forgiveness is one of the key ideas in this world. Forgiveness is not just some nebulous, vague idea that one can easily dismiss. It has to do with uniting people through practical politics. Without forgiveness there is no future."
"Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. It is opening the door for the other person to have a chance to begin again. Without forgiveness, resentment builds in us, a resentment which turns into hostility and anger. Hatred eats away at our well-being."
"Forgiveness is an absolute necessity for continued human existence."
"In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders. What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa."
"Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured."
"We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land."
"People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust."
"Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment. We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers."
"Sometimes you want to whisper in God's ear, "God, we know you are in charge, but why don't you make it slightly more obvious?""
"You and I are created for transcendence, laughter, caring. God deliberately did not make the world perfect, for God is looking for you and me to be fellow workers with God."
"It is for real that injustice and oppression will not have the last word. There was a time when Hitler looked like he was going to vanquish all of Europe, and where is he now?"
"Some of my friends are skeptical when they hear me say this, but I am by nature a person who dislikes confrontation. I have consciously sought during my lifetime to emulate my mother, whom our family knew as a gentle “comforter of the afflicted.” However, when I see innocent people suffering, pushed around by the rich and the powerful, then, as the prophet Jeremiah, says, if I try to keep quiet it is as if the word of God burned like a fire in my breast. I feel compelled to speak out, sometimes to even argue with God over how a loving creator can allow this to happen. In the Church of Sant'Egido in Rome, home of an extraordinary community of lay people devoted to working with the poor, there is an old crucifix that portrays Christ without arms. When I asked about its importance to the community, I was told that it shows how God relies on us to do God's work in the world. Without us, God has no eyes, without us, God has no ears; without us, God has no arms or hands. God relies on us. Won't you join other people of faith in becoming God's partners in the world?"
"Isn’t it noteworthy in the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus does not give a straightforward answer to the question "Who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29). Surely he could have provided a catalog of those whom the scribe could love as himself as the law required. He does not. Instead, he tells a story. It is as if Jesus wanted among other things to point out that life is a bit more complex; it has too many ambivalences and ambiguities to allow always for a straightforward and simplistic answer. This is a great mercy, because in times such as our own — times of change when many familiar landmarks have shifted or disappeared — people are bewildered; they hanker after unambiguous, straightforward answers. We appear to be scared of diversity in ethnicities, in religious faiths, in political and ideological points of view. We have an impatience with anything and anyone that suggests there might just be another perspective, another way of looking at the same thing, another answer worth exploring. There is a nostalgia for the security in the womb of a safe sameness, and so we shut out the stranger and the alien; we look for security in those who can provide answers that must be unassailable because no one is permitted to dissent, to question. There is a longing for the homogeneous and an allergy against the different, the other. Now Jesus seems to say to the scribe, "Hey, life is more exhilarating as you try to work out the implications of your faith rather than living by rote, with ready-made second-hand answers, fitting an unchanging paradigm to a shifting, changing, perplexing, and yet fascinating world." Our faith, our knowledge that God is in charge, must make us ready to take risks, to be venturesome and innovative; yes, to dare to walk where angels might fear to tread."
"When people say that the Bible and politics don't mix, I ask them which Bible they are reading."
"There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in."
"The U.N. is as effective as its member states allow it to be."
"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land."
"The first thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."
"If the reasons for Desmond Tutu becoming one of the world's most prominent advocates of faith-based social justice and religious tolerance could be reduced to a single succinct statement, it would be this: his fierce and uncompromising determination to tell the truth as he sees it."
"Nothing epitomizes Desmond Tutu's radicalism (using the word radical, as he likes to say, in the original sense of getting to the root of an issue) more than his views on the relationship of his faith to the faith of others."
"Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African anti-apartheid icon, has died at the age of 90. In 1984 Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work fighting to end white minority rule in South Africa. After the fall of apartheid, Archbishop Tutu chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he pushed for restorative justice. He was a leading voice for human rights and peace around the world. He opposed the Iraq War and condemned the Israeli occupation in Palestine, comparing it to apartheid South Africa. We re-air two interviews Archbishop Tutu did on Democracy Now!, as well as two speeches on the Iraq War and the climate crisis."
"There are so many people in South Africa, within the country, who are muzzled. And there are others who may not be muzzled within South Africa but whose passports are withdrawn, people like Bishop Desmond Tutu-a very important voice; you know, a writer is nothing compared with him. He is a big figure, a real leader, and he can't go abroad and speak. So I think that those of us who can, as long as we can, we have to use the opportunity."
"The climate movement has yet to find its full moral voice on the world stage, but it is most certainly clearing its throat-beginning to put the very real thefts and torments that ineluctably flow from the decision to mock international climate commitments alongside history's most damned crimes. Some of the voices of moral clarity are coming from the very young, who are calling on the streets and increasingly in the courts for intergenerational justice. Some are coming from great social justice movements of the past, like Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, former archbishop of Cape Town, who has joined the fossil fuel divestment movement with enthusiasm, declaring that "to serve as custodians of creation is not an empty title; it requires that we act, and with all the urgency this dire situation demands.""
"Dalawampu't limang taon na ang nakalilipas ang mga tao ay maaaring idahilan para sa hindi gaanong alam, o paggawa ng marami, tungkol sa pagbabago ng klima. Ngayon wala kaming dahilan."
"I met with members of the South African Supreme Court, spoke with doctors at an HIV/AIDS clinic, and spent time with Bishop Desmond Tutu, whose joyful spirit I had gotten to know during his visits to Washington. "So is it true, Barack," he said with an impish smile, "that you are going to be our first African president of the United States? Ah, that would make us all verrry proud!""
"Reft of a physical place in this world we can call home, exile makes us love the idea of South Africa. We are bottle-fed the dream: South Africa is not simply about non-racialism and equality but something much more profound."
"Mt. Everest is now the wealthy executive’s midlife crises."
"That thing you did 10 years ago that was significant everyone is doing it now. The thing you did a year ago, you’ve been copied"
"It is about what is happening within the group of people you have chosen to go with. The teams who failed, very few of them where actually stopped by the mountain. Even the ones caught in the storm they made complacent mistakes that made them vulnerable when things went wrong and then the teams that succeed it’s about the set of intangible tools a real clarity of purpose for your team"
"In other words, we can – and to survive, we must – transform and even end within the next ten years the failed system of capitalism that now threatens to collapse earth’s life support systems and with them, human civilisation. We must replace that economic system with one that respects boundaries and limits; one that nurtures ‘soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity’;6 one that delivers social and economic justice."
"The reality is that, today, all states are embedded in, governed by and subject to the international system of mobile, volatile, private financial markets – a system that has indebted and impoverished the many and raised political tensions, as reflected in the rise of nationalism. Millions of voters understand the nature of globalization, even while dimly aware of the monetary, fiscal or trade theories on which the system is built. This public awareness explains why some electorates have backed the election of “strong men” – politicians who offer “protection” from the very global markets that have stripped economies of jobs and income, while enriching rentier capitalists."
"Social democracy’s blind spot for the international financial architecture and its power over domestic policy-making has had other consequences. Not only does neglect of the international system let globalized capital markets off the regulatory hook, but globalization has also led to the rise of economic nationalisms."
"Globalization represents the tragic reversal of all that Keynes hoped to achieve at Bretton Woods: an international framework that would end nationalisms, international trade competition, high levels of domestic unemployment, low levels of aggregate demand and the consequent debt deflation. It was an attempt by Keynes and other economists to prevent the return of nationalisms and fascism by developing policies that increased domestic demand not by boosting exports and raising demand externally but by raising living standards at home: an inter-national system that would restore policy autonomy to democratic states and stability to the world’s economies."
"While teaching again, Brown soon realised that the same racism that she had fought in her home country was also prevalent in the UK. This was the awakening of a new goal – to fight the racism, sexism, and classism that was deeply entrenched in the British education system and wider society."
"So many of us have loved her dearly, been inspired by her virtues, benefited from her friendship, kindness and generosity, and regarded her as a trailblazer in so many things – her stand against apartheid, racism and injustice of all kinds; her service to education and gender rights; her compassion for humanity. She is in our hearts and thoughts and will be remembered as a fine human being as a very dear friend."
"Babette Brown came to the UK after she was forced into political exile due to her opposition to Apartheid. The author of several books on early learning and child development, at the age of 70, she went on to found Persona Dolls, making dolls of many different ethnicities and types, who would tell their stories through a teacher. Children were then encouraged to offer advice and solutions to the experiences a doll describes. This practical and non-threatening approach to dealing with difficult issues has proved especially effective with children. Her charity, established in the 2000s, produce the dolls in South Africa. Thousands of teachers globally are now trained to use the Persona Dolls approach."
"Although she didn’t win we were very satisfied, simply with the nomination, and we happily relaxed with another glass of wine content that Babette would have been so proud that her anti-racist work with young children, through Persona Doll Training, was being acknowledged.""
""Just as the nominations for all the categories were finished to our utter astonishment Babette’s face filled the screen again and it was announced that she had WON a special CHAIRMAN’S AWARD for her work with Persona Doll Training. Shocked, my brother, Peter Brown and I approached the stage to collect her award."
"There is a lot of pressure (in society) to be more than what you are and, in the process, we are not having conversations that matter"
"My grandmother was able to raise 11 kids, providing for them while also holding down different jobs (as a domestic worker and in a shop)"
"I think subconsciously seeing my grandmother work so tirelessly and being a happy woman influenced me to think that I can do a bunch of things and demand more out of life for myself"
"The conversations are set under the covering theme of Love, Loss and Life, because these are broad topics. Guests get to share their experiences with loss, life and what they have learnt"
"I hope each question I ask my guests, viewers can ask themselves so they can stop and think and consider their own journeys"
"I talk to the person (guest) behind the art. Not about what you do, but who you are. And I think some of these women have been longing for a space where people can be interested in who they are outside of the drama of fame"
"It was more about the different cultures rather than about colour but we have managed to work through that and we are still learning"
"We’re not desperately seeking your attention for its own sake: we pursue the stories that our editorial team deems important, and believe are worthy of your time."
"Allowing as many people as possible to read quality journalism from around the world – especially people who live in places where the free press is in peril."
"We’re not beholden to the political whims of a billionaire owner. No-one can tell us what not to say or what not to report."
"Ostensibly structured in the form of interchanging letters between middle-aged Vita living in Mudgee and her former benefactor, an elderly American named Royce, the novel gives way to more conventional storytelling as the narrative progresses, exploring how art, and the individual artist, can reckon with a brutal colonial past."
"The dual narratives converge in fascinating ways. Vita's chapters wrestle more explicitly with the function of art in post-apartheid South Africa and how inherited guilt shapes an approach to the subjects of her documentary films."
"It is in Pompeii, in fact, that the novel's deepest irony is found: the humans preserved after the ancient Mount Vesuvius eruption are afforded greater respect and dignity than the more recent victims of settler colonialism."
"“It was the great unsolved mystery of her field, why the things that make us happiest also make us unhappiest. Like alcohol. And family. And spouses. And children.”"
"Dovey also loosely bases another character on Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who was also at college when she was, but the narrative skirts around one Frederick Reese. Why exactly he inspires such loathing among his peers is not given much airplay."
""Life After Truth by Ceridwen Dovey review – lifestyles of the remarkably privileged". The Guardian. 12 November 2020. Retrieved 5 April 2025."
"'I had been waiting in Harare for five weeks and had been vetted and grilled. In the end I received a call telling me I should be at State House in half an hour. I arrived at 10am and three hours later His Excellency - "HE" as everyone calls him - received me.'"
"I think he granted me the interview because he feels he is getting old and it's time to put certain things on the record. But he expects to win the election and probably will.'"
"'I needed help in understanding how events in Mugabe's life, including his childhood, had impacted on his internal narrative.' By the time Mugabe was 10, his father had left home and his older brother had died. 'Mugabe has a thin skin and shaky self-image. When rejected or humiliated, he turns to revenge. His relationship with the British government has the intensity of a family feud.'"
"The story of [Zuma's] actions on that fateful night last year is a sad reflection on the former deputy president's morals and code of conduct. Zuma is not fit to lead a country where women's rights are high on the agenda, where the fight against Aids is, or should be, an urgent national priority and where the protection of the weak and vulnerable is the duty of the powerful. South Africa deserves a president who can lead by example. Jacob Zuma has shown he cannot do that."
"It is difficult to reach consensus on a definition of racism, but most people agree that it starts with generalizations. It involves projecting the attributes of an individual onto a group as a whole on the basis of race, with pejorative connotations. Heidi Holland's narrative is a classic example of this kind of racist thinking."
"This kind of racism was rife in the early years of our democracy. It relegated whites to "second class citizens", unable to state a fact if any black person might be offended by it. This warped logic has thankfully diminished somewhat due to many (black and white) South Africans rejecting it for the nonsense that it is."
"Before transformation there must be the belief that transformation is possible, and the willingness to be transformed."
"If we as a world ever got even a hint of the incredible love with which God loves us, we would be living in such a different world than we do now."
"To me, authentic leadership is leadership from the heart; from the center: that one recognizes the core of one’s being and leads from that space."
"If you conceptualize leadership as power over people, Ubuntu doesn’t have a place in that conceptualization. If you conceptualize leadership as power with people, it completely changes the way you operate, even as a leader."
"Forgiveness is not easy; it can seem like an impossible task. According to Mpho, only through walking this fourfold path, we free ourselves from the endless cycle of pain and retribution."
"forgiveness is the biggest help to transition away from the stereotypical patriarchal model that both women and men suffer under."
"Privilege is there is almost nothing about you that I have to know, and yet you know so much about me."
"we have to search our souls in order to find our own truth, to understand when we have been responsible for perpetuating inequality whether explicitly or complicitly. It is a painful process, but only then can we address it."
"I am working to create a world that is good for girls."
"For girls to flourish our world must be safe, our environment clean, our planet healthy"
"For girls to flourish their voices must be heard, their choices honoured, and their right to bodily integrity affirmed."
"When girls flourish the whole world flourishes."
"like every LGBTQIA+ child who has come out of the closet only to be thrown out of the house, I feel bereft. The South African church that was the mother of my faith has disowned me."
"The faunal sample from Kadzi, an Early Iron Age site in the Zambezi Valley, is the first substantial sample for that period and region in Zimbabwe."
"The site appears to have been a permanent or semipermanent settlement. The sample consists mainly of bovid remains, dominated by buffalo as a single species, suggesting special hunting skills."
"The presence of some domestic animals proves that these animals were available to the inhabitants of the site. Their status in the community is, however, uncertain. Possible explanations for the small number of cattle fragments could be the result of paucity of livestock for environmental or other reasons, or may reflect differential disposal of cattle bones as part of ritual expression."
"If you go to a Catholic Church in South Africa, it’s a far cry from what you are familiar with in France or Europe"
"We dance! This is Africa"
"the priests have been guilty of many, many things in their private capacity, not as representative of the church per se – you know, the child abuse and all those things"
"the people who colonized us used religion as an excuse, as an entry point, into this country."
"So they used religion – Christianity to be more specific – to deceive us"
"I still believe that the liberation theology movement did make an impact"
"Yes. Christianity, to many black people – especially in KZN1 which was then Natal or Zululand – was an escape"
"We pretend that queerness or homosexuality is a new phenomenon. It’s always been there. It’s there in our songs and historical books but it’s something that we’re, like, ashamed of"
"another stereotype – at least in contemporary society – that is associated with queer men, is that they are more feminine, which again is not true"
"I wanted to explore black people’s presence in the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. Because in all the texts that I’ve read, both nonfiction and fiction, black people are absent, so I wanted to bring that"
"If I want to tell a story successfully in a manner that is going to grab my readers, I have to be competitive, I can’t write as if I’m writing back in the 1960s"
"You have to be very careful as you are writing. Not too much preaching or teaching at the expense of entertainment. At the same time, you don’t want to be superficial."
"Migration impacted the lives of black people a lot in South Africa – forced migration – because it was always against our own will"
"I’ve seen some historical novelists playing with facts, that is just distasteful, disrespectful as to history"
"I find it works to draw people because history can be intimidating. But if you infuse it with some humor, it becomes more palatable in a way"
"I am not a reporter, I write opinions"
"We’re a country that is trying to find itself as a nation. We are not a nation"
"We have yet to formulate or to forge a common identity that says “South Africa""
"If you were a foreigner coming to South Africa, and you read the books, you will think black people do not exist"
"fiction projects today’s reality into the future much better than nonfiction"
"Being that young, I had to navigate the precarious space of being a colleague to these men, but also to be a child to them. When they were wrong on editorial matters, it was difficult for me to categorically tell them they were incorrect. I had to find euphemisms to put my points across. I didn’t always succeed"
"South African history, particularly that which has been forgotten or generally unknown, into the forefront so that it may not disappear into the past…to reignite unfinished conversations around issues of race, identity and land, for example"
"Writing a novel is like running a marathon"
"Contrary to popular belief, writing a short story is more difficult than writing a novel. A short story needs a clear focus, from beginning to end. In a novel there can be unnecessary deviations — which you can’t afford in a short story"
"systematically and deliberately tackle heavy subjects in my writing"
"As a novelist, I am concerned with the ways in which communities transform their historical experience into the symbolic terms of myth, and then use mythologised narratives of the past to organise their responses to real-world, present-day crises and events"
"Historical fiction can be a powerful tool in the hands of a writer who is also an activist"
"My job as a novelist is to record what happened back then, but to also raise a flag, to caution that the country still has some unfinished business"
"If we don’t resolve the issue of land redistribution decisively, and in a manner that takes full cognisance of the extent to which the majority was robbed, it may come to haunt us. It happened to our neighbour, Zimbabwe."
"Historical novels show us how the origins of many present-day problems lie in the past; they are vehicles for the necessary journeys that nations must take to be healed; they help us reimagine ourselves in the present day"
"The South African publishing industry is still largely in white hands."
"I have realised that the so called writer's block comes when the writing muscle does not get exercised as often as it should be"
"Capitalism is not necessarily more immoral than previous social systems with regard to cruelty to humans and the gratuitous destruction of nature. As a mode of production and a social system, however, capitalism requires people to be destructive of the environment. Three destructive aspects of the capitalist system stand out when we view this system in relation to the extinction crisis: 1) capitalism tends to degrade the conditions of its own production; 2) it must expand ceaselessly in order to survive; 3) it generates a chaotic world system, which in turn intensifies the extinction crisis."