South Africa

"A custom exists among our entire nation, where the inland peoples acquire the Dutch language, that they pronounce it in a very crooked and incomprehensible way, and cause us to imitate them therein, so that our Dutch children also acquire this practice, and the basis is laid for a broken language which eventually will be impossible to exterminate. Even less shall we be able to introduce the Dutch language among the Hottentot peoples, while they lack no competence in pronouncing the words correctly, without error, if you endeavor to dictate carefully to them, to which we should invest somewhat greater care."

"The language of the rural people is as little pure Dutch as the language of German farmers is pure German. The men have a fulsome speech and the women folk have assumed ways of speaking which at times are truly ridiculous."

"Translated from German: Die Sprache der Landleute ist so wenig reine Holländische Mundart als die teutschen Bauern reines Teutsch sprechen. Die Mannspersonen nehmen das Maul dabei sehr voll, und das Frauenvolk hat Redensarten angenommen, die zuweilen recht lächerlich sind. Zum Exempel. Man frägt etwan, ob sie keine Bibel haben, so erfolgt die Antwort: "Onz heeft" geen Bijbel ... Wenn man sie aber aldann frägt: Wie viel Unzen gehen auf ein Pfund? so werden die schamroth."

"He had lost his mother tongue almost completely and acquired the mutilated Dutch of the colonists."

"[I am acquainted with] that kind of bastard Dutch which was spoken in this country by the farmers and slaves, as well as among the Hottentots and various other heathen races, and which is not entirely absent from the speech of even the most cultured among Christians and the upper classes of people."

"The main purpose of the following collection, as one can immediately infer from the title of our work, was to eradicate from the Dutch spoken in this Colony, if it can be referred to by that name, words and expressions which are either entirely strange, or mutilated, or at least to indicate in which way this may be done."

"Translated from Dutch: Het hoofddoel van de volgende verzameling, gelijk men al dadelijk uit den titel van ons werk kan afleiden, was om het Nederduitsch, voor zoo ver de taal, die in deze Kolonie gesproken wordt, dien naam dragen mag, van deels geheel vreemde, deels verminkte woorden en spreekwijzen te zuiveren, of althans den weg daartoe aan te wijzen."

"You can trust me that the plat Hollands is read more among us farmers than that which Changuion wants to teach us in his booklets."

"Translated from Cape Dutch: Jij kan ver mij gloo dat die plat Hollans meer gelees wor onder ons boere as die wat Sankion ver ons wil leer in zijn boekies."

"The language of the Cape! … As if the miserable, bastard jargon, which is the vernacular of this country, is worthy of the name of language at all. … The poverty of expression in this jargon is such, that we defy any man to express thought in it above the merest common-place … There can be no literature with such a language, for poor as it is, it is hardly a written one … Let, then, your language and your nationality go, and believe us, you need not fear for your religion."

"You neither speak Dutch, that is the pure old Holland vernacular, much less would you soil your lips with the patois of the Hottentots about us. This I am sure is no offence, if I say you express your thoughts in a way which is not recognised in your pulpits, is not read in your books of law, does not figure in your scientific folios, and far less is it recognised as a language of an enlightened people, for it does not provide a descent vocabulary for the lowest of the low, nor for the highest of the lofty … It is one which is doing you and your children incalculable harm. It cramps your thoughts. It impedes your energies. It brings the blush to every modest women's cheeks, and makes the educated recoil with disgust too often. It corrupts the morals of your children, and befouls their innocent expressions ..."

"People tell you that Afrikaans isn't a language, because it is composed of Dutch, French, Hottentot, etc. However, the manner in which the English language is patched together is wisely hidden."

"True Afrikaners, we call on you to acknowledge with us that the Afrikaans language is the mother tongue that our Dear Lord gave us; and to make a stand with us through thick and thin for our language; and not to rest before our language is generally acknowledged as the national language of our country."

"An attempt is being made by a number of jokers near Cape Town to reduce the "plat Hollands" of the street and the kitchen to a written language and perpetuate it. They are carrying their joke well. They have a newspaper, have published a history of the colony, an almanack, and to crown the joke — a grammar. ... The promoters of the Patriot (accent the last syllable) movement are laughed at and ridiculed but they stick to their joke."

"Poor in the number of its words, weak in its inflections, wanting in accuracy of meaning and incapable in expressing ideas connected with the higher spheres of thought, it will have to undergo great modification before it will be able to produce a literature worthy of the name."

"[They] who … see no possibility of maintaining, or, rather, of restoring among the mass of the old Colonists the language of Holland, would keep out English by trying to make the lingo and slang of the lowest Hottentots the language of these people – even South Africa."

"The protection of our mother tongue must be the most important consideration of such a Bond, for language and nation are one, and those who do not see this as objective, had better not become members of our bond"

"[Although] phonetically Teutonic, it is psychologically essentially a Hottentot idiom. ... It can hardly be expected that the descendants of the Malayo-Polynesian slaves and Hottentot servants, who originally spoke an agglutinative tongue, will have any improving influence on an inflecting language."

"For intellectual training Africander Dutch offers no scope, for it has no literature and a very poor vocabulary. For internal intercourse and as a trade-medium English is superior to it; and for foreign trade it stands nowhere."

"Afrikaans ... elegant; so simple, serious, and earnest."

"The general does not use pure Afrikaans in his speeches, nor a Dutch that can easily be confused with the language of a Dutchman, but a kind of Afrikaans with Dutch inflections that he inserts haphazardly without any particular plan, so that every now and then, by pure chance, he gets one of them in the right place."

"For how long shall we entertain two thoughts? If Dutch is our language, why do we not speak it? If Afrikaans is our language, why do we not write it?"

"The Provincial Council accepted my motion that enables Afrikaans as a permissible medium up to the fourth standard."

"Be loyal unto death to your traditions, to your religion, to your language and to your people."

"Translated from Afrikaans/Dutch: Wees getrou tot den dood aan uwe tradities, aan uw Godsdie[nst,] aan uw taal, aan uw volk."

"If Afrikaans and Afrikanerdom went to ruin it would be an irrevoc­able catastrophe for South Africa. And it must not happen under any circumstances, for who has up to now preserved Afrikaans and Afrikanerdom? Not these people who hold symposia and talk big. The National Party brought Afrikaans and Afrikanerdom into being. ... Afrikaans is spoken in circles in which it was never spoken before. Today there is respect for Afrikaans from people who never had respect for it before. We should not complain that Afrikaans is going to ruin [due to language policy]. We should take pride and rejoice that Afrikaans is progressing with rapid strides in South Africa!"

"...a bridge between the great, luminous West and magical Africa … Our task lies in the current and future implementation of this gleaming vehicle ..."

"Were it not that Afrikaans literature glorifies white supremacy, and were it not for the unutterable evil this literature breathes, one would simply dismiss it as inane, a crushing bore."

"Will Afrikaans survive the Afrikaner empire?"

"The recent strikes by schools against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction is a sign of demonstration against schools' systematised to producing 'good industrial boys' for the powers that be... We therefore resolve to totally reject the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, to fully support the students who took the stand in the rejection of this dialect [and] also to condemn the racially separated education system."

"The government is prepared to be as accommodating as possible as far as the use of Afrikaans at African schools is concerned. ... In the white areas of South Africa [however, including Soweto], where the government erects the buildings, grants the subsidies and pays the teachers, it is our right to decide on language policy. The same applies to schools in areas where there is no compulsory education. Why are pupils sent to schools if [the government's] language policy does not suit them?"

"Unfortunately Afrikaans acquired certain historic connotations that resulted in its rejection by the black man, and these are political connotations."

"And Afrikaans, this child from the soil of Africa, has already become an instrument for millions of people – yes, for more than just the Afrikaner … God's plan, however, had been the creation of another civilization with a new language from Africa … Afrikaans and this beautiful southern land are undeniably grown together."

"Afrikaans is a language that grew and developed from the soil of South Africa, aided by a variety of languages and cultures in our land, rooted in the search for an own identity and freedom. Its power and hope for the future has never been based on special privilege; but rather as one of the languages of South Africa which will have to meet the future shoulder to shoulder, with mutual respect and equal rights."

"At present local English does not seem to have any particular social value, and thus there is no apparent reason for its speakers to wish to preserve its distinctive features. This is not true of non-standard Afrikaans, which is valued as warm, intimate, and a sign of membership of the community."

"Seen socio-linguistically, a language can never fully clothe the intellectual and affective life of its speakers unless granted entree to all functions. Of particular importance is that a language must enjoy access to the academic-scientific fields of language such as in politics, law, the media, and the university. Throughout the twentieth century, for just the reason of realising this ideal, immense expertise and energy went into developing Afrikaans. One thinks ... of the numerous scholars who could have made their mark internationally but chose instead to devote themselves to Afrikaans."

"...architect Jan van Wijk’s remarkable 1975 tribute to one of the world’s ugliest languages makes, if nothing else, a great picnic spot on the way to the wine lands of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch."

"…as it happens I am Afrikaans. …I actually do not think about it too much, just as I do not think about it too much that I have a liver. The current flutterings about Afrikaans, however, I find disturbing. It is not doing the image of Afrikaners, and hence also of Afrikaans, any good. …to beat one's chest in such a self-justificatory manner [a mere ten years after the end of apartheid] is bad taste morally. […] We are … being called up by certain parties to mobilise for Afrikaans, to fight for the survival of Afrikaans, and for minority rights. The problem is, however, that I do not see myself currently as part of a minority. When, in the 1970s and 1980s, as an Afrikaner, I resisted apartheid – and not in the 1990s when it became fashionable – then I felt myself part of a minority."

"At school, Afrikaans was a compulsory subject that I disliked intensely; it was a harsh language, like the people who spoke it. [...] In my father’s shop, ... I found ... to my surprise, that I was beginning to enjoy the language. [The] warm straightforwardness and ... earthiness in many of these people ... was richly and idiomatically expressed in their speech. And, although I have never advanced beyond being able to speak a sort of kombuistaal, I delighted in our conversations."

"Slaves and Khoikhoi servants had the greatest hand in the development of the restructured Dutch. In the course of the eighteenth century both burghers and their servants, in interaction with each other, took the restructuring further. Dutch was simplified and a considerable amount of Malayo-Portuguese, as spoken the slaves, was injected. By the end of the century Cape Dutch had largely become what is now Afrikaans. In the western Cape, especially in its rural towns and farms, the main variety of Afrikaans took root as the shared cultural creation..."

"The first attempt to formulate a distinctive Afrikaner historiography was made by [Afrikaner] residents of the small town of Paarl [who] founded the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Society of True Afrikaners). They were effectively reacting against cultural domination by the British colonial regime. ... They based their own history on publications by European authors who were critical of British imperialism and on private correspondence and interviews with fellow Afrikaners. Though this was simple, naive history, it was a path-breaking achievement. It was the first book published in Afrikaans – the spoken language of the people – as distinct from Dutch, from which it had grown apart in the South African milieu by simplifying the syntax, changing the vowel sounds, losing vocabulary items that were not relevant, and incorporating loan words from the other languages that were spoken at the Cape in the eighteenth century – Malay, Portuguese creole, and Khoikhoi."

"The seeds planted by the Paarl thought leadership did not bear much fruit so long as Afrikaners were divided between colonial and republican regimes. ... In spite of many setbacks, Afrikaner leadership gradually attained their nationalist goals... They also re-segregated the white group into Afrikaans-speaking versus the rest. Afrikaans became the premier official language while English was given second-class treatment. The leadership vowed that there was to be no mixing of language, no mixing of cultures, no mixing of religions and no mixing of races."

"At the heart of Afrikaner nationalist struggle was the attempt to imagine a new national community with its language enjoying parity of esteem with English in the public sphere. ... This meant that Afrikaans had to be heard in parliament, the civil service, schools, colleges and universities, and in the world of business and finance; it had to be the medium of newspapers, novels, and poems, giving expression to what was truly South African. Instead of English-speakers portraying Afrikaners in reports, novels or histories as everything they were not: unrefined, semi-literate, racist, dogmatic, and unprogressive, Afrikaners had to define and represent themselves as the true South Africans."

"A good local example of [the process of promoting a language] is Afrikaans: a 150 years ago, Afrikaans was generally regarded as “a mere vernacular” (in the negative sense of the word), used only in the lowest social functions, was without a writing system and had no literature. Gradually, however, it became used as an instrument in the struggle against the imperialism of the British colonial government and against the Dutch-oriented elite’s preference for Dutch (and English) in high-function contexts[.] A number of teachers and church ministers then initiated a movement directed at the development (corpus planning) and promotion (status and prestige planning) of Afrikaans. Gradually, a feeling of pride in and loyalty to Afrikaans developed, and within about 60 years Afrikaans was recognised as a language of the public domain[,] a fully-fledged standard language."

"Few languages have engendered as much controversy, with regard to both historical development and place in modern society."

"Afrikaans will survive and develop further in a range of dialects. That is important to me, that type of freedom. The Afrikaners don’t mean much to me."

"This is why Afrikaans-exclusive or even Afrikaans-dominant white schools and universities represent a serious threat to race relations in South Africa. You simply cannot prepare young people for dealing with the scars of our violent past without creating optimal opportunities in the educational environment for living and learning together."

"Afrikaans is a cancer that must be destroyed."

"By the 1990s Afrikaans was no longer the instrument of a chauvinistic Afrikaner nationalism. Afrikaner historians had begun to stress the multifaceted nature of our history, Afrikaans as a medium of instruction was no longer imposed on black schools and the language had been scaled back drastically on state radio and television. But [it could be celebrated that] Afrikaans, along with only three others (Hebrew, Indonesian and Hindi) were the only languages that in the course of the twentieth century made the transition from a low status, spoken language to a language used in all walks of public life, including literature, science and technology."

"The past 15 years have been characterised by an increasing migration of Afrikaans speakers into the digital space – a space that offers exciting new opportunities for Afrikaans."

"... socio-political history often casts Afrikaans as the language of racists, oppressors and unreconstructed nationalists. But [Afrikaans] also bears the imprint of a fierce tradition of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, of an all-embracing humanism and anti-apartheid activism."

"The world [of 2017] looks completely different than in 1937. Then, communication was limited, and the introduction of radio – in Afrikaans – changed the world."

"Die Kandidaat, Katrina and Jannie Totsiens constitute the golden era of Afrikaans film, as they delivered products of quality and intent which have probably not been met since. … these dynamic films sought to open up the eyes of the viewers to the brutally harmful and hurtful results of institutionalised apartheid on the other segments of the society, especially so to the so-called “Coloured” community. [Their] exclusion [from] Afrikaner identity, though sharing most of the culture and speaking the same language as “Afrikaners”, forms a central theme…"

"A language without a commercial value will die."

"The youth culture grabs the young language by its foreskin and gives it its first democratic climax!"

"It is unbelievable and / or unfortunate that even until today in this constitutional democracy we still have a society that sees nothing wrong with a language that was used as a tool of segregation and discrimination during apartheid which 90 percent of South African[s] bemoan; a language whose legacy is sorrow and tears to the majority of whom it was not their mother tongue."

"By the time the protesters outside Hoërskool Overvaal lobbed a petrol bomb at the police, it was clear that something as simple as a school’s language policy could still inflame deadly passions 41 years after the Soweto Uprising against Afrikaans in black schools. I could not help thinking: what is it about Afrikaans that brings out the worst in us?"

"The courageous fight of the Afrikaans newspaper Vrye Weekblad against the apartheid state, its unearthing of apartheid secrets during the states of emergency in Afrikaans needs a firmer place in our Struggle history. The vicious responses to Max du Preez, Jacques Pauw and Vrye Weekblad journalists by the apartheid state, where the courts were used to close it down, is part of the proud resistance history of Afrikaans."

"I publicly and in my personal capacity disagree with the phasing out of Afrikaans as one of the mediums of teaching at the University of Pretoria. As a country, you are shooting yourselves down. You will regret it in 30 years’ time."

"There was some misunderstanding between ourselves and the minority groups in the country, to be quite frank, especially people that are speaking Afrikaans, because the previous regime invested a lot of resources and energy in them. Our coloured communities feel marginalised, not loved, feel they are on the periphery."

"Everyone knows that the DA has failed to stand up for Afrikaans language and cultural rights despite their guarantee in the Constitution."

"For Afrikaans as a language of instruction, this is a major setback. The language's ability to subsequently recover at tertiary level is most limited if aggressive efforts are not made from Afrikaans ranks to keep it alive as a language of instruction. Being pro-Afrikaans does not mean being anti-English. For that we have empathy. This is about the official recognition of a language and everything that happens concerning it. This is about the violation of a basic human right, namely the maintenance of a language."

"The fact the Supreme Court of Appeal delivered this ruling is of great interest – it is the highest court that has yet ruled in favour of Afrikaans education on tertiary level. The cost order against Unisa further confirms the moral high ground of students who demand the right to education in their native language. ... The ruling emphasises that Afrikaans also has a place on government-supported campuses."

"... the DA is already preparing for a historic and unprecedented political campaign to demand that Afrikaans be equated with English at SU."

"Inclusivity means that you involve all the speakers of all the varieties on an equal footing. No variety, including the standard variety, is considered more important than the others. Afrikaans is the sum of the language's varieties. We need to be able to greet each other with a mirrag, hoesit, saloet and aweh. ... Broad alliances – in the spirit of the multilingualism advocate dr. Neville Alexander – is required to oppose the hegemony of English and create space for the indigenous languages, Afrikaans included."

"... the new language policy [at Stellenbosch University] must explicitly commit to increasing the Afrikaans offer to ensure full access for all deserving students who wish to study in Afrikaans ..."

"... one finds that that those who are calling for the exclusive use of Afrikaans in certain schools are actually inviting antipathy [which takes the] form of annual political football that politicians use to their advantage, which is a shame. Afrikaans is not an exclusive language for racist Afrikaners. In fact, the majority of its speakers, by dint of history, are not “Afrikaners”, ..."

"From its roots, like many colonial societies, South Africa was a society of great inequalities, both economic and political. In the twentieth century, this inheritance led to a highly undemocratic polity in which only whites were enfranchised. After the Second World War, Africans began to successfully mobilize against this political status quo, and they were able to exert increasing pressure, rendering the existing apartheid regime infeasible and threatening mass revolt. Attempts by the regime to make concessions, although leaving the system basically unaltered, failed to achieve this objective, and the apartheid regime maintained power through the use of extensive repression and violence. In 1994, the regime was forced to democratize rather than risk potentially far worse alternatives."

"American society as a whole seemed committed to the idea of the races living together on an equal basis. This was something few South Africans, white or black, had actually seen. Nconganwe had trouble accepting that it actually existed. In African culture, the family and extended family were everything. Loyalty to one's clan was far more important than any feeling of nationhood. America had forged her own borders. South Africa’s had been drawn by European colonists, with no thought to the peoples already living there."

"A doctor in rural South Africa describes his frustration. He says, "We have no medicines. Many hospitals tell people, you've got AIDS, we can't help you. Go home and die." In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to hear those words."

"Here are wide tracts of fertile soil watered by abundant rains. The temperate sun warms the life within the soil. The cooling breeze refreshes the inhabitant. The delicious climate stimulates the vigour of the European. The highway of the sea awaits the produce of his labour. All Nature smiles, and here at last is a land where white men may rule and prosper. As yet only the indolent Kaffir enjoys its bounty, and, according to the antiquated philosophy of Liberalism, it is to such that it should forever belong."

"In South Africa the rise of a very powerful and very affluent Black sector of the population, a Black bourgeoisie if you will, the potential for which was never really taken into account, at least not publicly during the struggle against apartheid-it was assumed that once Black people achieved political and economic power, there would be economic freedom for everyone, and we see that that's not necessarily the case. We have basically the same situation in the US."

"The Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Iranian revolutions aimed to overthrow dictatorships, foreign imperialism, and unjust economic systems. Efforts for social change in southern Africa, however, confronted the further obstacle of institutionally and culturally embedded racism. In the late twentieth century only one major nation claimed the distinction of awarding political rights on the basis of race: the Republic of South Africa. The white minority had confirmed its control of the mineral-rich country through the passage of a set of laws during the years 1948–1960 reinforcing race separation under the label “apartheid.” In the 1950s peaceful protests against white minority rule were severely repressed, as were attempts at rebellion from the 1960s on. In the 1990s movements opposing apartheid finally achieved access to state power through the national elections of 1994. But after the death of Nelson Mandela, the legendary leader of the antiapartheid movement, inequality and widespread poverty remained enormous problems that challenged a new generation of South African activists and leaders, despite the end of white minority rule and apartheid, and even though significant progress had been made in some areas."

"... it's an horrific circumstance that [the South African farmers] face and Australia has a refugee and humanitarian program – as well as a number of other visa programs – where we have the potential to help some of these people that are being persecuted. So I've asked my Department to have a look at options and ways in which we can provide some assistance because I do think, on the information that I've seen, people do need help and they need help from a civilised country like ours and more importantly than that, the people that we are talking about want to work hard, ... abide by our laws, integrate into our society, ... not lead a life on welfare ..."

"... as there has been an awakening in India, even so there will be an awakening in South Africa with its vastly richer resources – natural, mineral and human. The mighty English look quite pygmies before the mighty races of Africa. They are noble savages after all, you will say. They are certainly noble, but no savages and in the course of a few years the Western nations may cease to find in Africa a dumping ground for their wares."

"Compared to its regional counterparts, South Africa is a wealthy country. It has a strong economy and a solid industrial base. It has the potential to become a regional leader and assert influence over all of southern Africa. And yet, South Africa today is focused almost entirely inward, its ability to project power constrained by competition between numerous factions. This wasn’t always the case."

"Huh, not much bloody "Unitate" about this place!"

"To illustrate how dramatically populations can displace each other over time, the historian E.M. Kulischer once reminded his readers that in A.D. 900 Berlin had no Germans, Moscow had no Russians, Budapest had no Hungarians, Madrid was a Moorish settlement, and Constantinople had hardly any Turks. He added that the Normans had not yet settled in Great Britain and before the sixteenth century there were no Europeans living in North or South America, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa."

"South Africa’s religious communities deserve better than a regulatory system that treats them as subjects rather than partners. Professor Xulu’s resignation, whatever one thinks of his approach, serves as a reminder that the first casualty of overreach is always the freedom to speak, to dissent, and to govern one’s own faith without fear of bureaucratic retribution."

"In South Africa, Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Albie Sachs, Nadine Gordimer, Abie Nathan, and Helen Suzman are only among the most famous of the many Jews who joined the fight to bring down apartheid."

"I'm a Christian. I'm a South African. I'm an Afrikaner. I'm a lawyer. I love my country, and I think that this country has a great future. In that sense of the word, I'm a practical idealist."

"There are powers that are trying to manipulate our country's history by trying to portray it as dark, suppressive and unfair... Yes, we have made mistakes. Yes, we have often sinned and we don't deny this. But that we were evil, malignant and mean–to that we say "no"!"

"I prefer to live in South Africa because it's a wonderful country; because I've been there for 300 years."

"There are a number of imperfections in the new South Africa where I would have hoped that things would be better, but on balance I think we have basically achieved what we set out to achieve. And if I were to draw balance sheets on where South Africa stands now, I would say that the positive outweighs the negative by far. There is a tendency by commentators across the world to focus on the few negatives which are quite negative, like how are we handling AIDS, like our role vis-à-vis Zimbabwe. But the positives – the stability in South Africa, the adherence to well-balanced economic policies, fighting inflation, doing all the right things in order to lay the basis and the foundation for sustained economic growth – are in place."

"At thy call we shall not falter, firm and steadfast we shall stand. At thy will to live or perish, o South Africa dear land!"

"I've met the King of China and a working Yorkshire miner, but I've never met a nice South African."

"None of the articles of faith of the South African Constitution is plausible. The Constitution is not supreme and entrenched. Vulnerable to potent socio-economic forces it changes continuously and often profoundly regardless of stringent amendment requirements. The trite threefold separation of powers is more metaphorical than real and therefore unable to secure effective checks and balances. Though institutionally separated with their own personnel and functions, the three powers are ordinarily integrated in a single dominant political leadership."

"When [Nelson Mandela] was in prison I admired him for his moral strength... Of his period in power I can see few results. Apartheid no longer exists, at least to all appearances, but no one understands what the new government in South Africa is doing."

"We have never had a superhero that looks like us and speaks like us and shares the same experiences and environment as us. Comic books in South Africa are still at crawling stage. The market hasn’t been tapped into and activated. As someone who is passionate about comics and the power of comics, I see it as a challenge to overcome."

"SA, long regarded as the gateway to Africa, suffers from reputational damage due to the high crime rate (including high-profile murders), the finance minister fiasco, parliamentary shenanigans and chicanery by President Jacob Zuma over payment for upgrades at his Nkandla home."

"Being convinced in our consciences that a republic would be disastrous to the material well-being of Natal as well as of the whole of South Africa, subversive of our freedom and destructive of our citizenship, we, whose names are underwritten, men and women of Natal, loyal subjects of Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending the Crown, and in using all means which may be found possible and necessary to defeat the present intention to set up a republic in South Africa. And in the event of a republic being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN."

"It was in Southern Africa that there emerged the most carefully planned structures of interlocking directorates, holding companies, and giant corporations which were multinational both in their capital subscriptions and through the fact that their economic activities were dispersed in many lands. Individual entrepreneurs like Oppenheimer made huge fortunes from the Southern African soil, but Southern Africa was never really in the era of individual and family businesses, characteristic of Europe and America up to the early part of this century. The big mining companies were impersonal professional things. They were organized in terms of personnel, production, marketing, advertising, and they could undertake long-term commitments. At all times, inner productive forces gave capitalism its drive towards expansion and domination. It was the system which expanded. But in addition, one can see in Africa and in Southern Africa in particular the rise of a capitalist superstructure manned by individuals capable of consciously planning the exploitation of resources right into the next century, and aiming at racist domination of the black people of Africa until the end of time."

"The South Africans are very backward in terms of historical development. I hate South Africans. That's not a fair thing to say because I like a lot of South Africans but they really think they're the bees' knees and actually they've been the cause of so much trouble in this part of the world... I have a suspicion the blacks model themselves on the whites now that they're in power. "Don't you know who we are, man?" ... They think in BRICS that the "S" actually stands for South Africa whereas it stands for Africa. Nobody would want to go in for a partnership with Brazil, China, India and South Africa for Christ's sake... I dislike South Africa."

"Whenever there was a crisis in power in South Africa, one of the communities that has always got the brunt of violence has been the Indian community. Because we have been soft targets believing in non-violence. Therefore, we have become vulnerable targets to perpetrators."

"the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, had started “seizing land from his own citizens without compensation because they are the wrong skin colour”"

"I come from a beautiful land, richly endowed by God with wonderful natural resources, wide expanses, rolling mountains, singing birds, bright shining stars out of blue skies, with radiant sunshine, golden sunshine. There is enough of the good things that come from God’s bounty, there is enough for everyone, but apartheid has confirmed some in their selfishness, causing them to grasp greedily a disproportionate share, the lion’s share, because of their power. They have taken 87 of the land, though being only about 20 of our population. The rest have had to make do with the remaining 13. Apartheid has decreed the politics of exclusion. 73 of the population is excluded from any meaningful participation in the political decision-making processes of the land of their birth. The new constitution, making provision of three chambers, for whites, coloreds, and Indians, mentions blacks only once, and thereafter ignores them completely. Thus this new constitution, lauded in parts of the West as a step in the right direction, entrenches racism and ethnicity. The constitutional committees are composed in the ratio of 4 whites to 2 coloreds and 1 Indian. 0 black. 2 + 1 can never equal, let alone be more than, Hence this constitution perpetuates by law and entrenches white minority rule. Blacks are expected to exercise their political ambitions in unviable, poverty-stricken, arid, bantustan homelands, ghettoes of misery, inexhaustible reservoirs of cheap black labor, bantustans into which South Africa is being balkanized. Blacks are systematically being stripped of their South African citizenship and being turned into aliens in the land of their birth. This is apartheid’s final solution, just as Nazism had its final solution for the Jews in Hitler’s Aryan madness. The South African Government is smart. Aliens can claim but very few rights, least of all political rights. In pursuance of apartheid’s ideological racist dream, over 3.000.000 of God’s children have been uprooted from their homes, which have been demolished, whilst they have then been dumped in the bantustan homeland resettlement camps. I say dumped advisedly: only things or rubbish is dumped, not human beings. Apartheid has, however, ensured that God’s children, just because they are black, should be treated as if they were things, and not as of infinite value as being created in the image of God. These dumping grounds are far from where work and food can be procured easily. Children starve, suffer from the often irreversible consequences of malnutrition – this happens to them not accidentally, but by deliberate Government policy. They starve in a land that could be the bread basket of Africa, a land that normally is a net exporter of food."

"[T]here is always the possibility of change. If it happened in South Africa, why can't it happen anywhere?"

"My heart will always be in South Africa... made me the person that I am today. But I knew I needed another challenge for myself."

"As we coasted along two men began to run along the beach opposite us. This land is very attractive and well situated; and we saw many cattle wandering about on the land here; and the further we advanced the better did the land become and the higher the groves of trees."

"Let us live and strive for freedom, in South Africa our land!"

"My mind started wandering and then it struck me: Aren't we looking for convergence and unification? ... I was struck by the extent it resonated with what Mandela had in mind. "Yes, it might work!" I thought... I think one must realist that red, white and blue or orange white and blue harked back to South Africa's colonial heritage... Public reaction was muted, originally, but once Mandela was inaugurated on 10 May, with the flags draped over Union Buildings in Pretoria, people warmed to the fact they had a new president, with a new flag to go with him... The level of acceptance exceeded my wildest expectations... I grew up in the Anglican church and this particular design was in fact incorporated into the classical chasubles worn by priests in both the Catholic and Anglican church... I feel happy to have contributed in some small way."

"As South Africans daily work to build a better society, they are surrounded in many forms and countless manifestations by a flag which recognises and celebrates the unity and diversity of the country's people... Few would have imagined, almost a decade ago, that this collection of colourful shapes could become such a potent symbol of unity and progress. But then fewer still would have thought that a country torn apart by decades of racial oppression could transform itself into a beacon of democracy and hope."

"We have a very serious problem with our examination standards at both primary and high school. We also have a collapse of moral standards in society in general"

"The special task team found that there can be no historical interpretation of the statue and the space around it without relocation. This finding is supported by the university’s executive management. Members of the special task team will form part of the reconfiguration process"

"There is also much frustration about the supposed severe levels of white supremacy at this university. Yet, we are having this discussion on the campus of a university with a black vice-rector and a black rector and a black chancellor, in a municipal ward that has a black councillor, in a city with a black mayor in a province with a black premier, in a country with a black deputy-president and a black president. Despite this, we are somehow discussing how white people control everything."

"Let us leave nothing unmoved that will help us to become a independent people, and nothing more will be done than to ensure that our children receive a good education."

"The Government (Volksraad) of the Orange Free State, which is much smaller than that of the other states, are determined to uplift the standard of education in the Orange Free State to the same level of other wealthier states."

"We should steadily and surely strive to this goal, because if we educate the children of South Africa our influence shall reach far and wide, this influence shall bring about a unification and that is undoubtedly the calling of the Orange Free State."

"I came 8 000 miles to say, thank you, Vrystaat!"

"In some countries the Constitution only formalises, in a legal instrument, a historical consensus of values and aspirations evolved incrementally from a stable and unbroken past to accommodate the needs of the future. The South African Constitution is different: it retains from the past only what is defensible and represents a decisive break from, and a ringing rejection of, that part of the past which is disgracefully racist, authoritarian, insular, and repressive and a vigorous identification of and commitment to a democratic, universalistic, caring and aspirationally egalitarian ethos expressly articulated in the Constitution. The contrast between the past which it repudiates and the future to which it seeks to commit the nation is stark and dramatic."

"One does not cross a river without getting wet."

"When the white man came to our country, he had the Bible and we had the land. The white man said to us, "Let us pray". After the prayer, the white man had the land, and we had the Bible."

"By 1901 racial segregation was the norm in most of the British Empire. It was most explicit in South Africa, however, where Dutch settlers had from an early stage banned marriage between burghers and blacks. Their descendants were the driving force behind subsequent legislation. In 1897 the Boer republic of the Transvaal prohibited white women from having extramarital intercourse with black men, and this became the template for legislation in the Cape Colony (1902), Natal and the Orange Free State (1903), as well as in neighbouring Rhodesia."

"Racism is a part of a problem, a world problem, which has to be overcome... We are struggling with racism [in South Africa], but racism is also alive and well in many other countries. And what we must overcome is racism being the cause of conflict. And what we need to recognize human beings as human beings; to award merit."

"It will dawn on them that over the body of the woman silence is being drawn like a blanket."

"In an article written for the Washington Post, Smith claimed that 'rape is endemic' in South African culture, and that 'the role of tradition and religion' in fostering a culture of rape needed to be understood. She stated that rape 'has become a prime means of transmitting [HIV/AIDS], to young women as well as children'."

"Many forms of sexual violence, particularly sexual harassment and forms of sexual coercion that do not involve physical force are widely viewed as normal male behaviour."

"I met much evidence to show that white men's ideals of justice in South Africa are becoming corrupted by contact with the colored hordes. The negro is a lusty animal, and he casts envious eyes upon the beauty of the white woman. While I was at Kimberley several sexual and semisexual outrages (of a most weird and uncanny character) were reported. Only one of the culprits was caught, and summary punishment was meted out to him by his white captor. The white community, far from being shocked, quietly applauded. There was no fuss of any sort. The law said nothing."