Women Authors From South Africa

"The minute we lose the ability to see the humanity in the next person that looks different from you—that's when racism is planted into the fibre of society, and that's when we desensitize ourselves to the importance of existing in a just and equitable world with people that look different from us"

"I believe in anti-racism so much because I believe it's at the core of us solving so many other social issues 12 May, 2025"

"Laws can change, but people still have to change"

"The generation of Nelson Mandela brought political emancipation. But political emancipation doesn't exist without economic and mental emancipation"

"I've realised that a big part of fighting racism deals with the mind — and the only way to unlock and liberate the mind is through access to knowledge"

"the oppressed — Black people, people of colour — need to get to a point where they take themselves out of their own mental prison and liberate their minds"

"I believe that if we can work on empowering those schools, we'll definitely be doing a huge job in society"

"Poverty is a manmade crisis"

"It takes guts, patience and a lot of hard work. I think anyone who is passionate about writing and wants to own and be in control of their creativity can do it. I used my own money to publish, which was risky because I wasn’t sure how well my book was going to do. It took a while before the money I made from book sales was actual profit. But I’m at a great place now"

"I have rejected many ‘influencer’ deals, turned down many celebrity event invitations (not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because I know my limits and complications"

"If the assumption that I’m influential is true, then that’s the one issue I’m willing to speak about, openly and honestly."

"There are things that you can’t translate into English, if you tried the sentence would be completely flat"

"Sometimes I don't even like or agree with her, but I can't change her or tame her just because I'm not happy with her decisions."

"I’m the most known person who isn’t a celebrity"

"I'd rather someone talk to me about the characters in my books than my style of writing. I wanted it to appeal to someone on a social grant, to someone in an executive office."

"The stories I write come from being a black woman in South Africa, the friendships and relationships I have had, families and what we perceive as love"

"The fact that you have a gift that is different from a lot of people… that you can create things and the understanding of the value of that and what it can do for you. You need to understand what intellectual property is. Artists and creators, rarely ever consult an intellectual property attorney or ask questions or some of them don’t even know that those exist. So, you need to have that information. The research and the knowledge and protecting what you have created, there are ways to protect what you do"

"at no point in my life did I sit down in a garden and inhale fresh air, watch flowers blooming under the blue sky and become inspired to write about broken men and the women who try to fix them"

"I don’t have a sacred writing space, but I do write better after midnight, when I’m surrounded by creative energy"

"It is them — because they are still buying my books and hyping them even five years later — who motivate me to continue writing"

"It’s very difficult to adapt a book into a film, especially a fictional book where I have the freedom to do whatever I want to do with the characters."

"The greatest thing about writing fiction is you don't know where the story is going. When I was writing Hlomu I became her - you internalise the character and you let her lead you"

"February has always been a dull month for me, a dreadful period where I’m tired and irritable. My sister says it’s my mind rebooting itself. I say I don’t know and I don’t care because, ironically, it is also the period where I’m most creative."

"So many things have come out of my writing journey and the risk I took to publish myself. The best one is the growing fearlessness about telling our stories as they are and using familiar language to tell them."

"It is our responsibility as storytellers to promote a reading culture to communities, many of which are marginalised."

"Reading opens one’s mind to different things and different worlds and expands horizons"

"I don't think anything inspires creativity for me. I just wanted to write a story about black people."

"In order to create a culture of reading among children, we need to make books accessible to them and write stories they can relate to"

"The truth is I would have been fine i it had flopped, because at that time I wasn't as invested as I am now in the business."

"You don’t have to create something new. Just be in a conversation and then something new will arise."

"There will be points where the work will not be magnificent and there will be moments when it comes back to itself again."

"I think university catches you at a very specific time in your life where you, yourself, are trying to figure out yourself."

"If you’ve had a quarrel, a walk in the garden calms things down"

"My restaurant in the Seventies and Eighties was the place to be. I’ve cooked for most of the Royals, Elton John, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Alec Guinness… the list goes on. They all loved my food – at least, I hope they did!"

"Definitely the Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square. I was determined to fill that empty plinth! It took five years of campaigning with my committee at the Royal Society of Arts, but we did it."

"while cooking for 300 at Vintners Hall, I mistakenly thawed beetroot puree instead of raspberry for the vanilla ice cream. I added sugar and lemon juice, used it anyway, and guess what? Nobody noticed!"

"Every school child should learn 10 basics: Shepherd’s Pie, Spag Bol, Pizza, Curry, Salad Nicoise, Omelette, Quiche, Ratatouille, Trifle, and Apple Pie. These recipes will make you a hit at uni and set you up for life!"

"Our first job was to deal with the concrete. The previous tenant farmer couldn’t make money out of his farm"

"The book has been very well received. Our first distribution was through direct sales and donations to children and projects that might not have afforded the book. We are now preparing to reprint, and the book will go into retail bookshops. We are also working on an Afrikaans edition."

"No, this is not my first book for children. But the “ethos” in all those I have written is consistent. They all evoke compassion and care and are rich in love of the environment."

"I wanted to give a sense of: “Come with me and let’s look at some wonderful, natural things, and let’s have fun, but let’s also learn together to cherish each other and all living things.” So, the first “voice” belongs to Phoebe as she invites the young reader to travel with her, and the book concludes with her basically empowering the child to take care of the earth."

"I’m particularly interested in Balthazar and his study of the stars and planets, and the courageous way in which he challenges the status quo of the known universe."

"I’m a romantic. Perhaps at a push, we could fit this novel in among the Romantics. But I think it’s better placed as Gothic though I’m not Gothic."

"Yes, I wrote these verses to complement each of the Parts One, Two and Three. Each verse places a solitary figure on a landscape and so sets a contemplation in place. But the epic poem, the one that appears in Part Two and then accompanies the novel to its end, I only started writing about half-way through the novel and completed it at the end. The epic poem took my final attention and care. It had to appear as an ancient text, with some parts lost."

"Sarah Clayton made a podcast with my husband, Don Pinnock, who is an expert on youth at risk. She was looking at the connection between the roots of criminality in childhoods where a love and respect of animals is not nurtured. Don introduced me to Sarah, and we agreed to work together to teach children, through stories and poems, to love animals, nature and the wilderness."

"I was six then. Ouma recited them to the Coloured community that lived on the outskirts of the Strand, where she used to go and teach them Bible lessons after Sunday school. I still remember how hard it was for me to walk down that long dirt road, holding Ouma's hand, her jokes along the way and the glimmer in her deep green eyes when she looked down at me. She could not have been more than five feet tall herself."

"I would stand to one side of her pulpit in front of the Coloured community, and Ouma and I and the entire congregation would end up in tears as hymn after heart-stirring hymn was sung."

"The story of [Zuma's] actions on that fateful night last year is a sad reflection on the former deputy president's morals and code of conduct. Zuma is not fit to lead a country where women's rights are high on the agenda, where the fight against Aids is, or should be, an urgent national priority and where the protection of the weak and vulnerable is the duty of the powerful. South Africa deserves a president who can lead by example. Jacob Zuma has shown he cannot do that."

"'I needed help in understanding how events in Mugabe's life, including his childhood, had impacted on his internal narrative.' By the time Mugabe was 10, his father had left home and his older brother had died. 'Mugabe has a thin skin and shaky self-image. When rejected or humiliated, he turns to revenge. His relationship with the British government has the intensity of a family feud.'"

"It is difficult to reach consensus on a definition of racism, but most people agree that it starts with generalizations. It involves projecting the attributes of an individual onto a group as a whole on the basis of race, with pejorative connotations. Heidi Holland's narrative is a classic example of this kind of racist thinking."