Journalists From South Africa

"“The wind of freedom, which was blowing throughout the world for all people, turned and flowed into the room. As they breathed in the fresh, clear air their humanity awakened. They examined their condition. There was the foetid air, the excreta and the horror of being an oddity of the human race, with half the head of a man and half the body of a donkey. They laughed in an embarrassed way, scratching their heads. How had they fallen into this condition when, indeed, they were as human as everyone else? They started to run out into the sunlight, then they turned and looked at the dark, small room. They said: "We are not going back there.”"

"“Maybe he concentrated on his immediate situation. It was African. It was horrible. But wherever mankind had gathered itself into a social order, the same things were happening. There was a mass of people with no humnaity to whom another mass referred: Why, they are naturally like that. They like to live in such filth. They have been doing it for centuries”"

"once you make yourself a freak and special any bastard starts to use you. That's half of the fierce fight in Africa'"

"“Dikeledi could make no secret of the fact that, in relation to men, she often suffered from high blood pressure, except that the trouble with the bloodstream had eventually boiled down to one, unattainable man.”"

"“That is, adoration was patient and waiting while love or, if you liked, plain sexual passion banged everything about. It either shouted or thought it knew too much, and it had always left him cold and had not involved his heart. Therefore, if he wanted to get involved now it would be on his own terms and at his own pace.”"

"“The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed to Makhaya far preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images, and looked around at all the thin naked old men who sat under trees weaving baskets with shaking hands. People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that. 135”"

"“The man who slowly walked away from them was a king in their society. A day had come when he had decided that he did not need any kingship other than the kind of wife everybody would loathe from the bottom of their hearts.”"

"“At such times he would think, "What will I do if she does not love me as much as I love her?" A terrible reply came from his heart, 'Kill her.”"

"“There was something Dikeledi called sham. It made people believe they were more important than the normal image of humankind. She had grown up surrounded by sham.”"

"“When no one wanted to bury a dead body, they called the missionaries; not that the missionaries really liked to be involved with mankind, but that they had been known to go into queer places because of their occupation. They would do that but they did not often like you to walk into their yard. They preferred to talk to you outside the fence.”"

"“Before the white man became universally disliked for his mental outlook, it was there. The white man found only too many people who looked different. That was all that outraged the receivers of his discrimination, that he applied the technique of the wild jiggling dance and the rattling tin cans to anyone who was not a white man.”"

"“Poverty has a home in Africalike a quiet second skin.It may be the only place on earth where it is worn with unconscious dignity.”"

"I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.”"

"“…This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that.”"

"“Love is mutually feeding each other, not one living on another like a ghoul.”"

"“And if the white man thought that Asians were a low, filthy nation, Asians could still smile with relief – at least, they were not Africans. And if the white man thought Africans were a low, filthy nation, Africans in Southern Africa could still smile – at least, they were not Bushmen.”"

"“A discipline I have observed is an attitude of love and reverence to people.”"

"“The whole village was involved. There was no longer buzz, buzz, buzz. Something they liked as Africans to pretend themselves incapable of-- being oppressive and prejudiced-- was being exposed. They always knew it was there but no oppressor believes in his oppression.”"

"“It seemed to be a makeshift replacement for love, absenting oneself from stifling atmospheres, because love basically was a torrential storm of feeling; it thrived only in partnership with laughing generosity and truthfulness.”"

"“I once sat down on a bench at Cape Town railway station where the notice "Whites Only" was obscured. A few moments later a white man approached and shouted: 'Get off!' It never occurred to him that he was achieving the opposite of his dreams of superiority and had become a living object of contempt, that human beings, when they are human, dare not conduct themselves in such ways.”"

"Bessie Head: I found her novels very, very gripping, fascinating, challenging, really intellectually intriguing."

"I asked Bessie Head why a writer of such renown as she chose to remain in an isolated village, with no telephone, few modern conveniences, remote from the culture of cities. She told me Serowe suited her literary themes. She came from a humble background, she said, and preferred ordinary people. Powerful people, she went on, tended to be domineering; they don't pay their bills. The village people, she said, pay their bills "meticulously." "I have the courtesies, and love, of the people," she said. "What other life can I live?""

"I think there's something very special about women writers, black women writers in America and those that I know of in any real sense in Africa-Bessie Head, for example, in Africa or Gloria Naylor here. There's a gaze that women writers seem to have that is quite fascinating to me because they tend not to be interested in confrontations with white men-the confrontation between black women and white men is not very important, it doesn't center the text. There are more important ones for them and their look, their gaze of the text is unblinking and wide and very steady. It's not narrow, it's very probing and it does not flinch. And it doesn't have these funny little axes to grind. There's something really marvelous about that."

"“they cannot exist unless they can live in the village insuch a way that the changes that they bring about are necessary … in determining who they are"

"It's only education that turns a man away from his tribe."

"I don’t care about people. I don’t care about anything, not even the white man. I want to feel what it is like to live in a free country and then maybe some of the evils in my life will correct themselves."

"He sat quite still, staring ahead with calm, empty eyes, and he looked so lordly for all his tattered coat and rough cowhide shoes that Makhaya smiled and walked up to him and greeted him."

"The country presented overwhelming challenges, he said, not only because the rainfall was poor but because the majority of the people engaged in subsistence farming were using primitive techniques that ruined the land. All this had excited his interest."

"But witch doctors were human, and nothing, however odd and perverse, need be feared if it was human."

"Why should men be brought up with a false sense of superiority over women? People can respect me if they wish, but only if I earn it."

"It was the mentality of the old hag that ruined a whole continent - some sort of clinging, ancestral, tribal belief that a man was nothing more than a grovelling sex organ, that there was no such thing as privacy of soul and body, and that no ordinary man would hesitate to jump on a mere child."

"Well-educated men often come to the crossroad of life .. One road might lead to fame and importance, and another might lead to peace of mind. It's the road of peace of mind that I'm seeking. ["

"In this country there is a great tolerance of evil. It is because of death that we tolerate evil. All meet death in the end, and because of death we make allowance for evil though we do not like it."

"It was his belief that a witty answer turneth away wrath and that the oil of reason should always be poured on troubled waters."

"Tie a man's hands behind his back and then ask him if he's going to chop down a tree."

"One might go so far as to say that it is strong, dominating personalities who might play a decisive role when things are changing. Somehow they always manage to speak with the voice of authority, and their innate strength of character drives them to take the lead in almost any situation. Allied to all this is their boundless optimism and faith in their fellow men."

"You find yourself throwing blows but weeping at the same time, because of all the people who sit and wail in the darkness, and because of all the fat smug persecutors to whom this wailing is like sweet music, and some inner voice keeps on telling you that your way is right for you, that the process of rising up from the darkness is an intensely personal and private one, and that if you can find a society that leaves the individual to develop freely you ought to choose that society as your home."

"Most men want to achieve great victories ... But I am only looking for a woman."

"There seemed to be ancient, ancestral lines drawn around the African man which defined his loyalties, responsibilities, and even the duration of his smile."

"Things wouldn’t have been so bad if black men as a whole had not accepted their oppression and added to it with their own taboos and traditions."

"Prostitutes, he was to decide, were the best type of women you'd find among all black women, unless a man wanted to be trapped for life by a dead thing. A prostitute laughed. She established her own kind of equality with men. She picked up a wide, vicarious experience that made her charter in a lively way, and she was so used to the sex organs of men that she was inclined to regard him as a bit more than a sex organ. Not so the dead thing most men married. Someone told that dead thing that a man was only his sex organs and functioned as such. Someone told her that she was inferior in every way to a man, and she had been inferior for so long that even if a door opened somewhere, she could not wear this freedom gracefully. There was no balance between herself and a man. There was nothing but this quiet, contemptuous, know-all silence between herself, the man and his functioning organs. And everyone called this married life, even the filthy unwashed children, the filthy unwashed floors, and piles of unwashed dishes."

"I don't know these people but my search for a faith has taught me that life is a fire in which each burns until it is time to close the shop."

"People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. ... It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion a like that."

"He had grown up in an atmosphere where the most important thing in the world was the stronger whose shadow darkened the doorstep. People were the central part of the universe of Africa, and the world stood still because of this."

"Poor people are poor because they don't know how to get rich."

"Dinorego was saying, ‘We can progress too, even though we are uneducated men. The mind of an uneducated man works like this: he is a listener and a believer. Most of all he is a believer.’"

"There was always something on this earth man was forced to love and worship by reason of its absence. People in cloudy, misty climates worshiped the sun, and people in semi-desert countries worshipped the rain."

"Most men were waiting for the politicians to sort out their private agonies."

"Being an African man he ought to have known that nothing happened on the continent of Africa without all Africans getting to know of it."

"Even the trees were dying, from roots upwards,' he said. 'Does everything die like this?' 'No,' she said. 'You may see no rivers on the ground but we keep the rivers inside us. That is why all good things and all good people are called rain. Sometimes we see the rain clouds gather even though not a cloud appears in the sky. It is all in our heart.'"