Sindiwe Magona

"She would fulfil her obligations as she understood them and provide for them. The only way she could be a mother to her children, she saw, would be to leave them"

"Instead of being kind and buying this and that for the maid, just translate the kindness to this woman’s wages […]"

"once the white child reaches the age of five and has to start school, the black child becomes an embarrassment, a visible reminder of the inequalities endemic in the society"

"the morning paper, the Cape Times, carried the story of the child murdered on the beach. Front page, the story made"

"Today, no one knows the name of the little girl found in a rubbish drum at the back of the butcher’s shop. They don’t know it today, for they never knew it then"

"Now that the pass has gone"

"There are not enough mothers during the day to force the children to go to school and stay there for the whole day. The mothers are at work. Or they are drunk. Defeated by life. Dead. We die young, these days."

"Yet, even today we still laugh sad laughs, remembering our innocent incredulity. Our inability to imagine certain forms of evil, the scope and depth of some strains of ruthlessness. We laugh, to hide the gaping hole where our hearts used to be. Guguletu killed us . . . killed the thing that held us together . . . made us human. Yet, we still laugh."

"Mxolisi turned one year. A part of me hated him. Not him . . . but what he was . . . had been . . . the effect he seemed to have on my life. Always negative, always cheating me of something I desperately wanted. I shrunk; because he was."

"Unganyebelezeli, kuza kudlalwa!’ piped Mxolisi’s little voice, calling for daring and defiance. To look at him do the war cry of the Comrades, poised in a defiant stance, his tiny fist up in the air, couldn’t but send all those who heard him into paroxysms of laughter."

"There was nothing unusual about this. Mxolisi, now four years old, could already tell the difference between the bang! of a gun firing and the Gooph! of a burning skull cracking, the brain exploding."

"No,’ the girl’s mother said quietly. ‘There were many people there. Looking. Some were even laughing. None stopped the crime, none. Until your son arrived on the scene."

"Yes, Mzukulwana,’ he sighed, ‘the biggest storm is still here. It is in our hearts — the hearts of the people of this land. ‘For, let me tell you something, deep run the roots of hatred here. Deep. Deep. Deep."

"The sun went and died in the west."

"Tatomkhulu was a fund of facts that, although seemingly different, made a whole lot of sense of some of the things we learned at school. He explained what had seemed stupid decisions, and acts that had seemed indefensible became not only understandable but highly honourable."

"But now, my Sister-Mother, do I help him hide? Deliver him to the police? Get him a lawyer? Will that mean I do not feel your sorrow for your slain daughter? Am I your enemy? Are you mine? What wrong have I done you . . . or you me?"

"Your daughter. The imperfect atonement of her race. My son. The perfect host of the demons of his."

"She was not robbed. She was not raped. There was no quarrel. Only the eruption of a slow, simmering, seething rage. Bitterness burst and spilled her tender blood on the green autumn grass of a far-away land. Irredeemable blood. Irretrievable loss."

"One boy. Lost. Hopelessly lost. One girl, far away from home. The enactment of the deep, dark, private yearnings of a subjugated race. The consummation of inevitable senseless catastrophe."