Novelists From South Africa

"And I thought to myself, to think that my poor little niece is not even aware that she is so important. That her innocent request to pay me a visit can be regarded as a threat to the security of the great Republic of South Africa."

"These damnable laws which dictate to you where, and next to whom, you shall walk, sit, stand and lie... This whole abominable nauseating business of toilets and "separate but equal facilities"... What is one to do anyway? One is forever in a trap from which there is no escape... except suicide..."

"My handwriting had never looked so beautiful. I had at last decided to free myself of the shackles which had bound not only my hands, but also my soul."

"Botswana. It is not called Bechuanaland any more now."

"Attempt to grasp, with the creative imagination, the past and its silences."

"Even during the days and nights when she was dazed and only half awake the stories must have insinuated themselves into her torn and bruised body like draughts and ointments with healing powers beyond all explanation. (There is no pain and no badness,) she still hears the dry voice of old Taras in her ear, that a story cannot cure."

"Uncovers the dark places into which we may fear to look."

"...flotsam from the fatherland."

"They rig Sharisha with dynamite. [...] the emergency workers place more than five hundred kilograms of dynamite in all the strategie places, especially close to Sharisha's head. Like a high priest in a ritual sacrifice a man stands over a contraption that is connected to the whale with a long red cable. With all due solemnity he triggers the explosives. Sharisha goes up in a gigantic baU of smoke and flame. [...] [The Whale Caller] is looking intently at the red, yellow and white flames as Sharisha rises in the sky. It is like Guy Fawkes fireworks"

"Lunga Tubu's voice coming from the waves, singing a Pavarotti song," he muses wistfully that "maybe one day Pavarotti will adopt him""

"He has neither touched a whale nor even Sharisha, except with his spirit - with his horn. He knows absolutely that this boat-based whale watching will be abused"

"Conversely, Noria’s memory of the village is the pale herd boys, with mucus hang- ing from the nostrils, looking after cattle whose ribs you could count, on barren hills with sparse grass and shrups. The lean cattle and barren hills are partly result of overgrazing, which is in turn due to shortage of land for black people."

"Camagu has no heart to tell her that Athens is a college town that is even smaller than the nearby town of Butterworth*."

"They do not like to be called squatters. How can we be squatters on our land, in our own country? Squatters are those who came from across the sea to steal our land"

"Men, on the other hand, tend to cloud their heads with pettiness and vain pride. They sit all day and dispense wide-ranging philosophies on how things should be. With great authority in their voices, they come up with wise theories on how to put the world right. Then at night they demand to be given food, as if the food just walked into the house on its own. *When they believe all the children are asleep, they want to be pleasured. The next day they wake up and continue with their empty theories."

"When they believe all the children are asleep, they want to be pleasured. The next day they wake up and continue with their empty theories."

"For instance, when the Whale Caller wants to consummate relationship with his wife, images of whale interfere at the moment of ex- citement and he goes limp"

"Bhonco is different from the other Unbelievers in his family, for Unbelievers are reputed to be such somber people that they do not believe even in those things that can bring happiness to their lives. They spend most of their time moaning about past injustices and bleeding for the world that would have been had the folly of belief not seized the nation a century and a half ago and spun it around until it was in a woozy stupor that is felt to this day.”"

"In those days, they did not allow people of his colour onto any of the beaches of the city, so he could not carry out his ablutions there, as he does today."

"By the time he has finished, every inch of the walls is covered with bright pictures – a wallpaper of sheer luxury."

"Funerals were held only on Saturday and Sunday mornings those days, because death was not as prevalent then as it is at present."

"You have always been good at creating beautiful things with your hands."

"We are like two hands that wash each other."

"Hymns flow into one another in unplanned but pleasant segues."

"The Cult of the Unbelievers began with Twin-Twin. Bhonco Ximiya’s ancestor, in the days of the Prophetess Nongqawuse almost one hundred and fifty years ago. The revered Twin-Twin had elevated unbelieving to the heights of religion.”"

"Yes, Bhonco carries the scars that were inflicted on his great-grandfather, Twin-Twin, by men who flogged him after he had been identified as a wizard by Prophet Mlanjeni, the Man of the River. Every first boy-child in subsequent generations of Twin-Twin’s tree is born with the scars.”"

"The villagers will actually lose more than they will gain from the few jobs that will be created. Very little of the money that is made here will circulate in the village."

"The boats are now restored to their former glory as a reminder of a bygone era and bygone manual practices so that present and future generations can see how fishermen of the old endured the stormy seas in small open boats powered by their own muscles."

"It is strange how things don’t change in these shanty towns or squatter camps or informal settlements or whatever you choose to call them."

"It is not different, really, here in the city. Just like back in the village, we live our lives together as one. We know everything about everybody. We even know things that happen when we are not there; things that happen behind people’s closed doors deep in the middle of the night. We are the all-seeing eye of the village gossip. When in our orature the storyteller begins the story, ‘They say it once happened…’ we are the ‘they’. No individual owns any story. The community is the owner of the story, and it can tell it the way it deems it fit."

"You see, they say they are fighting for freedom, yet they are no different from the tribal chief and his followers. They commit atrocities as well."

"Yet there is nothing that rises, phoenix-like, out of the ashes. All the Whale Caller can do at the scene of the explosion is sit "silent and still as blubber rains on him. Until he is completely larded with it""

"We go for what we call a joll. All it means is that we engage in an orgy of drinking, raping, and stabbing one another with knives and shooting one another with guns."

"That exactly is how my father and mother met and became man and wife. There were no home ceremonials, such as the seeking and obtaining of parental consent, because there were no parent; no conferences by uncles and grand-uncles, or exhortations by grandmothers and aunts; no male relatives to arrange the marriage knot, nor female relations to herald the family union, and no uncles of the bride to divide the bogadi (dowry) cattle as, of course, there were no cattle. It was a simple matter of taking each other for good and or ill with the blessing of the ‘God of Rain’. The forest was their home, the rustling trees their relations, the sky their guardian and the birds, who sealed the marriage contract with the songs, the only guests. Here they stablished their home and names it Re-Nosi (We-are-alone)."

"O, go away, you steely monster! Why must you arrive so soon When I, at the moment, am lost in thought And wish that I could hide myself At home among the mielie-stalks, Covered with cobs, surrounded by pumpkins; For there I should never be disturbed By bustling crowds of chattering people Passing noisily on their way: I see them at dawn, I see them at dusk – At sunrise and sunset they pass me by."

"Never be led by a female lest thou fall over a precipice."

"Chief Moroka was not as great an orator as most of the Native chiefs but he excelled in philosophy. In that respect his witty expressions and dry humour were equal to those of Moshueshue, the Basuto King. He spoke in a staccato voice, with short sentences and a stop after each, as though composing the next sentence. His speeches abounded in allegories and proverbial sayings, some traditional and others spontaneous. His own maxims had about them the spice of originality which always provided his auditors with much food for thought."

"The viewpoint of the ruler is not always the viewpoint of the ruled."

"It is that wind it is that voice buzzing it is whispering and whistling in the wires miles upon miles upon miles on the wires in the wind in the subway track in the rolling road in the not silent bush it is the voice of the noise here it comes the Third World Express they must say, here we go again."

"The forests shook with the awful thunder of the guns, which stirred a wild agitation among the denizens of the day. Terrified game of every description scattered in all directions and fled for dear life; oxen bellowed in surprise and wild hounds yelped, wolves and jackals ran as though possessed by a legion of devils. Wild birds rushed out of their nests and protested loudly against the unholy disturbance of the peace of their haunts."

"Our greatest enemy is not the whites. It is our own disunity. They know that, of course, and they encourage it. Their Christian religion is one of the weapons they use to divide us. That, by the way, was why I disturbed you when you told me the book you were reading was their Bible."

"If you examine the weapons closely you will soon discern the reason. Warfare is endemic on this part of the coast. Most of the slaves who come to us are prisoners of war. If we did not sell arms and ammunition, there would certainly be less warfare and the supply of slaves might dry up. There is, however, a distinction between between the quality of arms required for such local warfares as will ensure us a steady supply of slaves, and weaponry that might pose a threat to ourselves. Beyond that we do of course exercise some discrimination in the choice of our customers: we would not want even weapons of inferior quality turning up in the hands of potential enemies."

"He sees every female slave as just a vagina on two legs, she thought bitterly, not for the first time."

"Curiosity is unbecoming in the female sex. This girl's curiosity surely comes from your teaching her to read. An ability to read is prejudicial in any woman, in a slave doubly and triply so. It opens them to ideas unsuited to their station in life."

"A hasty dog always burns his mouth."

"There’s always a return to the ruins, only to the womb there is no return."

"No one knows what the elephant ate to make it so big."

"So long as there are two men left on earth there will be war."

"A man was not made to live alone. Had it not been for Mhudi, I don’t think you would have known me at all. She made me what I am. I feel certain that your manhood will never be recognized as long as you remain wifeless."

"One party went to far away Zimbabwe and returned with pack-oxen loaded with ivory, rhinoceros hides, lion skins and hog tusks. They reported finding a people whose women dug the mountain sides for nuggets and brittle stones, which they brought home to boil and produce a beautiful metal from which to mould bangles and ornaments of rare beauty. That was the Matebele’s first experience of gold smelting."