activists-from-south-africa

"The fact is that I am self-expressing. I make work that is about me and my place in the world. I can’t always get stuck in the thinking that some people think it’s controversial or react in ways that say it’s controversial"

"Being queer is being political, it is a political identity for me even more that a gender ultimately"

"I am an artist concerned primarily with contemporary socio-political narratives. I am interested in portraiture as co-authorship; social media as narrative; technology as self-reflection and provocation. I am Genderqueer, which is a non-binary transgender identity and my work deals with issues around the gaze, whiteness, capital, body politics, queer identities and radical love. I ask you to address me with gender neutral pronouns They, Them, Their."

"All of these right-wing parties keep trying to prove that there is reverse racism happening and that’s a complete fairy tale. Reverse racism can only exist if you get into a time machine, go back and do to white people what white people did to black people for hundreds of years"

"I am really inspired by what is happening on campuses, it’s the reason I am here. People are demanding more and they are demanding what they deserve. I wouldn’t want to be an artist anywhere else"

"Most of my work is about understanding what violence and power do to people and how people strive to dignity. We can choose to ignore what is happening around us or we can choose to get involved, I would rather be active than inactive. My idea is to shift that white people are oppressed"

"The thing about being queer is that you are constantly becoming It’s a very active identity because being queer is not about who you are but what you do"

"I have made images and told stories of people in a multitude of mediums, including photography and video documentary for the past 20 years. More recently I have been extending my art practice in ways that shares those experiences in ever more creative ways, through exhibitions, interventions, installations and performances with an aim to providing a lens for social justice. I have worked and collaborated with visual and performing artists, theatre-makers, filmmakers, dancers and audiences to make work that engages beyond aesthetics. The work democratises the creative process, because it helps people develop a language to articulate their conditions and provide a platform to express their imagination."

"“That's how you beat the fascists: one act of resistance after another,” and “Freedom is very simple idea, which is why, perhaps, it can be so easily lost”."

"Getting out was a bit like making your way through a jungle: if you know the way and all the hazards that lie before you the chances of getting through are good; if you know nothing the tendency is to take chances based on intuition, with unknown results."

"They were very big locks so you could see the marks on the inside. When you're making it the lock is right there, you keep filing it until it fits in the holes. You hardly have to measure,” he further elaborated."

"I just accepted apartheid because I didn't know any better. I just assumed that's the way things were." — Criminal podcast, Episode 146: Ten Doors, 2020"

"A lot of people can't understand how we got the shape of the key, but if you break it down – most of the dimensions you get from the lock itself, you measure the hole,” he explained in relation to his escape."

"Two decades after the destruction of the Anglo Boer War, the Afrikaners didn't blame the past for all their troubles. They baked and sold koeksisters, they started companies, they organized fundraisers to build schools and universities... Entitlement ideology increases poverty."

"Our leaders should stop singing about murdering people"

"There is a very clear upward variance in farm attacks and farm murders after high-profile incidents of hate speech"

"Our analysis of five incidents of hate speech from high political leaders against farmers indicated that farm murders in the months following these incidents increased by an average of 74.8%"

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth, because they don't want their illusions destroyed"

"Its just plain racist to say the colour of your skin determines if you are a legitimate owner of land"

"We believe there are important reasons why the US should take a stance on what is happening in South Africa"

"The biggest historic fallacy of our time is that white people stole the land"

"There is a climate in which violence towards farmers is being romanticized by politicians"

"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."

"It is fair to say that even in present-day conditions, Christian missions have been in the vanguard of initiating social services provided for us. Our progress in this field has been in spite of, and not mainly because of, the government. In this, the church in South Africa, though belatedly, seems to be awakening to a broader mission of the church in its ministry among us. It is beginning to take seriously the words of its Founder who said: "I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly.""

"We meet here to express our deep resentment at the claim made by South Africa though its governments and parliaments since the union, to determine and shape our destiny without consulting our wishes, and arrogantly to assign us a position of permanent inferiority in our land, contrary to the plan and purpose of God our Creator, who created "all men equal." And into us too, not to whites only, He breathed the divine spirit of human dignity. And so we have every human and moral right to resist laws and policies which create a climate inimical to the full development of our personalities as individuals, and our development as a people."

"The fate of Africans in the cities of the nation rests on the stand we take against this tyrannical action of the government. As leaders we shall do all in our power to consolidate the country to oppose the carrying out of this outrageous tyrannical scheme."

"Scientific inventions, at all conceivable levels should enrich human life, not threaten existence. Science should be the greatest ally, not the worst enemy of mankind. Only so can the world, not only respond to the worthy efforts of Nobel, but also ensure itself against self-destruction. Indeed the challenge is for us to ensure the world from self-destruction. In our contribution to peace we are resolved to end such evils as oppression, white supremacy and race discrimination, all of which are incompatible with world peace and security. There is indeed a threat to peace."

"The laws and policies of white South Africa are no doubt inimical to this development. And so I call upon our people in all walks of life ministers of the Gospel of Christ, who died to save human dignity, teachers, professional men, business men; farmers and workers to rally round the congress at this hour to make our voice heard. We may be voteless, but we are not necessarily voiceless; it is our determination more than ever before in the life of our congress, to have our voice not only heard but heeded too. Through gatherings like this in all centres, large and small, we mean to mobilize our people to speak with this one voice and say to white South Africa: We have no designs to elbow anyone out of South Africa, but equally we have no intention whatsoever of abandoning our divine right, of ourselves determining our destiny according to the holy and perfect plan of our Creator. Apartheid can never be such a plan."

"...as a Christian and patriot, [I] could not look on while systematic attempts were made, almost in every department of life, to debase the God-factor in man or to set a limit beyond which the human being in his black form might not strive to serve his Creator to the best of his ability. To remain neutral in a situation where the laws of the land virtually criticized God for having created men of color was the sort of thing I could not, as a Christian, tolerate."

"The mitigating feature in the gloom of those far-off days was the shaft of light sunk by Christian missions, a shaft of light to which we owe our initial enlightenment. With successive governments of the time doing little or nothing to ameliorate the harrowing suffering of the black man at the hands of slave drivers, men like Dr. David Livingstone and Dr. John Philip and other illustrious men of God stood for social justice in the face of overwhelming odds."

"I have joined my people in the new spirit that moves them today, the spirit that revolts openly and boldly against injustice and expresses itself in a determined and non-violent manner."

"In so far as gaining citizenship rights and opportunities for the unfettered development of the African people, who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door?"

""Laws and conditions that tend to debase human personality - a God-given force - be they brought about by the State or other individuals, must be relentlessly opposed in the spirit of defiance shown by St. Peter when he said to the rulers of his day: "Shall we obey God or man?" No one can deny that in so far as non-Whites are concerned in the Union of South Africa, laws and conditions that debase human personality abound."

"May the day come soon, when the people of the world will rouse themselves, and together effectively stamp out any threat to peace in whatever quarter of the world it may be found. When that day comes, there shall be "peace on earth and goodwill amongst men", as was announced by the Angels when that great messenger of peace, Our Lord came to earth."

"My only painful concern at times is that of the welfare of my family but I try even in this regard, in a spirit of trust and surrender to God's will as I see it, to say: "God will provide." It is inevitable that in working for Freedom some individuals and some families must take the lead and suffer: The Road to Freedom is via the CROSS."

"I do not hate the white man; you see, his position of domination has placed him in a position of moral weakness."

"Lutuli is primarily a mediator... he sought to reconcile tribal values with Christianity... and bridge the gap between traditional tribal organization and the system of parliamentary democracy"

"I have been moved by the award to you of the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize and I join with many others from all parts of the world in extending sincere congratulations to you. This high recognition of your past and continuing efforts in the cause of justice and the advancement through peaceful means of the brotherhood of man is applauded by free men everywhere."

"I only regret that circumstances and spacial divisions have made it impossible for us to meet. But I admire your great witness and your dedication to the cause of freedom and human dignity. You have stood amid persecution, abuse, and oppression with a dignity and calmness of spirit seldom paralleled in human history. One day all of Africa will be proud of your achievements."

"We join two distinguished South Africans, the late Chief Albert Lutuli and His Grace Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to whose seminal contributions to the peaceful struggle against the evil system of apartheid you paid well-deserved tribute by awarding them the Nobel Peace Prize"

"All those people across the world who value courage, decency and compassion, have lost one of their noblest champions...I shall always remember my visit. For 5 years his own people had no direct word from their leader, yet his patient and compassionate devotion to the future of his country became a model of courage and dedication for all of us.""

"A man of peace and one who believed passionately that inter-racial strife was an evil, destructive and totally wasteful force."

"...On the same day, the Prize for 1960 was awarded for the first time to an African – Albert Luthuli, one of the earliest leaders of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. For me, as a young African beginning his career in the United Nations a few months later, those two men set a standard that I have sought to follow throughout my working life."

"Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible - the known pilots and the unknown ground crew. So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man's inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live - men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization - because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake."

"Chief Albert Luthuli was a man of universal wisdom, and exceptional integrity: a man of deep compassion, motivated into political action by his deep Christian commitment. The African National Congress is proud today to list him among its Presidents."

"To witness the damage a single person can inflict on a country, one can head to South Africa. Following the liberation from apartheid, Nelson Mandela, as president from 1994, created a climate of reconciliation while democratizing the country and liberalizing the economy. Under Mandela and his successor, Thabo Mbeki, inflation was tamed, government debt was halved and the growth rate reached 5 per cent. The outside world thought South Africa could be the next economic miracle. But the leader of the ANC’s left wing, Jacob Zuma, agitated against this ‘neoliberal’ model and gained power in 2009–18 on a programme promising that state control of the economy would create fair distribution. He really did change things – for the worse."

"Zuma jacked up public spending, but for consumption and corruption, not investment. State-owned companies were drained by Zuma and his lackeys, who are suspected of having looted about the equivalent of 20 per cent of GDP. Constant power outages and collapsing infrastructure contributed to growth collapsing and soon becoming negative. After being halved under the predecessors, public debt doubled under Zuma. Extreme poverty had also halved under the previous administration; under Zuma it not only stopped declining but even began to increase. That’s the way it usually goes. Strongmen who complain that growth takes too long to provide results are like the farmer who has no patience with the harvest and quickly makes himself popular by letting everyone gorge on the seed. Fewer seeds means you will have less to eat next season. Sooner or later, you’ll run out of other people’s harvests, as Thatcher would have said."

"President Zuma‚ from being a child‚ never had a chance‚ because of the situation in this country‚ even to go to school. But he was educated the ANC way. ... President Zuma‚ out of the top six positions‚ [was the only person to occupy] most of those positions – deputy secretary general‚ national chairperson‚ deputy president and now president. ... It shows love‚ respect and adoration. [Zuma's leadership within the ANC was] a long‚ beautiful history but spoiled at the last moment. [The transition is peaceful, but painful also,] because this is telling somebody [that] your time is up when [he] should have known by himself that his time is up."

"Do you seriously want us to leave the future of the ANC and the future of this country in the hands of such a man? Is that what you want?"

"With a malleable, corrupt or dysfunctional prosecuting authority, many criminals – especially those holding positions of influence – will rarely, if ever, answer for their criminal deeds. Equally, functionaries within that prosecuting authority may […] be pressured […] into pursuing prosecutions to advance a political agenda."