Anti Apartheid Activists

"As radical women we all come from traditions that minimize the individual because we understand that capitalism focuses on the individual, greed and accumulation."

"White people have to give up their race privilege. Otherwise, Black people will have to continue fighting racism, which is really a distraction from the crucial healing and recovery work that we need to do among and inside ourselves."

"We need to think about globalization as being much more than structural adjustment policies by the World Bank, or the economic policies of the IMF which have devastated so many societies and lives; or just the financial infrastructure through which life becomes financialized on behalf of speculative capital which currently rules the world; the markets and all that."

"When we fight racism, we create spaces which are quickly occupied by white people, because they are still not giving up their privilege."

"When you are born, you arrive on this planet with everything you need. It is inside you, you just have to explore it and bring it to the collective human project of freedom."

"The whole idea of buying and selling Africans was a brutal exercise in dehumanizing us, and the societies that benefitted from this brutality have remained essentially slaving societies. Africans everywhere held onto the ancestral spiritual traditions and practices of humanism within the self and community – and the ties with those who came before – so as to survive the brutality of hatred."

"As females, we are under constant social and cultural surveillance. We are told that we belong to everybody else except to ourselves. This is the foundation of hetero normativity, and too many women have accepted this fraud."

"Contemporarity is about situating yourself in the new possibilities and opportunities that our world is offering us, based on the many struggles that women have engaged in since the dawn of patriarchal time. We cannot be told by the UN or by those who occupy the state, who we are and what our feminism is."

"What were called “alternatives to capitalism”, like socialism, communism, and other expressions of egalitarianism were largely crafted, imagined and framed by males. We must bring our feminism to the alternative, with all its different energies and expressions not only of resisting patriarchy, but also of celebrating who we are and who we want to become as women."

"This crisis of black survival is directly linked to the predation of big international pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations, which are mining the Black female body. We have become the latest and last capitalist frontier."

"All humans have the capacity to experience pleasure, we have to understand its political significance and meanings. That is a feminist insight which we must return to, because in these contemporary societies that we live in, our bodies, our ideas, ourselves can become so easily commodified through the idea of pleasure as something that is for sale."

"We can breed, we can labor, we are creative, we are the first mathematicians, the first scientists, the first agriculturalists, we are a treasure trove. In the moment of male awareness about how amazing and central women are in the creation of surplus and the re-creation of human productivity, then arises the notion of power, exercised through the ownership of women’s bodies."

"Feminism is so powerful: because it is not an event that is just emerging now. It is embedded in the oldest memories of human consciousness about freedom. We are born with this instinct to be free and then begin the struggle to resist the attempts to appropriate our freedom, which we experience through the marking of our bodies and the commodification of our bodies."

"Feminists always create new languages. The normative language is inadequate to say what we want to say and to do what we want to do."

"Whites who continue to benefit from racism as institutionalized privilege don’t call themselves white Africans, but call us Black Africans. It’s so astounding the ways in which neoliberalism depoliticizes and erases our histories of resistance. It disowns us from the legacies that we should be protecting and mobilizing with to continue the struggle."

"All nationalisms are expressions of ideology that brings large numbers of people together to resist oppressive, dominant, intrusive systems."

"They stripped him of the very dignity we had spoken about in discussing Nineteen Eighty-Four, and they did it because, to them, he was 'just another kaffir', and that is what I will never forgive them for."

"I will never carry a pass!"

"Adelaide’s servant-leadership towards marginalised communities under the apartheid state traversed to serving those who were close to her heart and in society’s margins, such as the elderly and children living with disabilities. Adelaide strongly believed in serving all members of society equally, regardless of their socio-economic status."

"In Winnie Mandela’s trials and tribulations we have in microcosm the experiences of thousands of wives and mothers of political prisoners and detainees who pass through the dungeons of the apartheid regime. These torments inflicted on one woman are a vivid example of the ruthless persecution to which opponents of racism and apartheid are subjected."

"Her sustained and brave fight against unjust laws and promoting the rights of workers. She consistently pushed back against the injustices meted out on the disenfranchised."

"Today we meet here to honour a great South African woman who made an immense contribution to the people of South Africa, a woman who although she was taken away from us and deliberately silenced, is still loved, a woman who many of us remember and still treasure through the memories we have of her."

"You who have no work, speak. You who have no homes, speak. You who have to run like chickens from the vulture, speak. Let us share our problems so that we can solve them together."

"We must share the problems so that we can solve them together. We must free ourselves. Men and women must share housework...must work together in the home and out in the world. Women must unite to fight for...rights. We have opened the way for you. We must go forward!"

"I decided I will fight them to the last drop of my blood, and I will show them that women are going to bring about change in South Africa, and we did."

"It is an individual choice you make in your life to make a difference. It is an individual choice to understand that my neighbour is not as privileged as I am. Extend your heart to those around you, and that is the democracy you should protect.It is an individual choice you make in your life to make a difference. It is an individual choice to understand that my neighbour is not as privileged as I am. Extend your heart to those around you, and that is the democracy you should protect."

"If you are to free yourselves you must break the chains of oppression yourselves. Only then can we express our dignity, only when we have liberated ourselves can we co-operate with other groups. Any acceptance of humiliation, indignity or insult is acceptance of inferiority."

"To those who oppose us, we say, Strike the woman, and you strike the rock."

"I’m not sorry. I will never be sorry. I would do everything I did again if I had to. Everything."

"An inspirational leader. An activist. A passionate educator. A philanthropist. A woman, inspired by the idea that one can change the world, the idea that one can change the existing conditions of the people – that all South Africans are treated equal. A champion of the rights and emancipation of women."

"She deserves so much credit for the quality of a life of service that Walter led. Her own sacrifice and service deserve as much of our respect and recognition. The naming of this Center after Walter is a tribute to her as well."

"Among these revolutionary giants was stalwart Albertina Sisulu who played a formative role in the opposition to apartheid and in building a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa...we celebrate the centenary anniversary of the life of Mama Sisulu – who took on the mantle of leadership during our darkest hours and remained a selfless servant of the people throughout her life. For her bold role in the fight for freedom, she suffered immensely at the hands of the apartheid regime. She was jailed several times for her political activities and constantly harassed by the apartheid’s security police."

"She was a defining symbol of the struggle against apartheid. She refused to be bowed by the imprisonment of her husband, the perpetual harassment of her family by security forces, detentions, bannings and banishment. Her courageous defiance was deeply inspirational to me, and to generations of activists."

"He (Nelson Mandela) walked like a man who does not take the earth for granted. He took one step after another with obvious care and delight. Right next to him, Winnie Mandela stayed close, attuned and alert, and radiant."

"She suffered so much bringing up her two girls when @NelsonMandela was in prison: beaten up banned banished to remote Brandfort harassed imprisoned. Fearless defiant in face apartheid state. Remember that when correctly criticising her rogue later life"

"I wish to acknowledge Mama Winnie Madikizela Mandela for her efforts and steadfastness for standing with Tata Mandela before and during Tata's imprisonment and for being in the forefront of ANC's struggle for liberation."

"It has never been about me, the person. I’ve never regarded myself as an individual, I’m just part of this whole liberation machine … I always talk about us - as we - because I’m just part of the whole collective."

"She is an admirable woman. Her husband, one of the leaders of the African National Congress, is imprisoned for life on our Devil's Island. As for Winnie, she never gave up the struggle. She is put in and out of prison constantly. For example, she was arrested after the events of Soweto because she had organized, in collaboration with other blacks, an association of parents that seemed, at first, insignificant but quickly became extremely important. This organization strove to eliminate the estrangement that had developed between the young blacks, who had revolted, and the older generation. This is one of the very serious problems facing the black community today, this gap between the generations. The young accuse their parents: "You allowed yourselves to become discouraged; you were afraid to take risks. Us, we are not afraid. We demonstrate; we confront the guns; we want to fight." And they radicalized their elders in an extraordinary manner. By speaking out in favor of the action of the young people, Winnie Mandela, thanks to her eminence, certainly influenced a part of the black community that until then had been traumatized by the acts of the young. That is the reason she was judged and condemned. When she is not in prison, she is placed under house arrest and thus prevented from moving about or working. For a while after the rebellions, the government permitted her to live in Soweto in her house but basically forbade her to leave or to receive anyone there. Then they did something even more horrible; they exiled her to a small village deep in the countryside. It is there that she is living at present. And the only news published about her appears when those who brave the interdiction visit her and get caught."

"Women are the people who are going to relieve us from all this oppression and depression. The rent boycott that is happening in Soweto now [in the 1980s] is alive because of the women. It is the women who are on the street committees educating the people to stand up and protect each other"

"We are each required to walk our own road and then stop, assess what we have learnt, and share it with others. It is only in this way that the next generation can learn from those who have walked before them. We can do no more than tell our story. Then it is up to them to make of it what they will."

"“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”."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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"

"Weeks after the invasion, Grenadians were still smelling out and burying bodies which lay all over the island. The true casualty figures will never be known. No civilian body count is available. Even the bodies of Maurice Bishop and his slain ministers are never positively identified, no doubt to forestall any possible enshrinement by the people who loved him, no doubt to make the task of smearing his popular memory more easily accomplished. It has already begun."

"We, the people of this region, demand that our region is recognised and respected as a Zone of Peace. We demand an end to all military task forces and air and sea patrols of our region. We demand that the people of the region must be free from aggressive military harassment of any military power. We demand an end to the Monroe Doctrine and to the Carter Doctrine and all other doctrines which are aimed at perpetuating interventionism or backyardism in the region. There must be an end to all attempts to use the so-called peacekeeping apparatus of the Organization of American States to militarily intervene in the region, to hold back progressive and patriotic movements."

"Your Revolution, Comrades, has also provided the region and the world with a living legend with your great and indomitable leader, Fidel Castro. Fidel has taught us not only how to fight, but also how to work, how to build socialism, and how to lead our country in a spirit of humility, sincerity, commitment, and firm revolutionary leadership."

"People of Grenada, this revolution is for work, for food, for decent housing and health services, and for a bright future for our children and great grandchildren. The benefit of the Revolution will be given to everyone, regardless of political opinion or which political party they support. Let us all unite as one. All police stations are again reminded to surrender their arms to the people's revolutionary forces."

"I am appealing to all the people, gather at all central places all over the country, and prepare to welcome and assist the people's armed forces when they come into the your area. The Revolution is expected to consolidate the position of power within the next few hours. LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE OF GRENADA! LONGLIVE FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY! LET US TOGETHER BUILD A JUST GRENADA!"