Fred Khumalo

"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"