"Capitalism is not necessarily more immoral than previous social systems with regard to cruelty to humans and the gratuitous destruction of nature. As a mode of production and a social system, however, capitalism requires people to be destructive of the environment. Three destructive aspects of the capitalist system stand out when we view this system in relation to the extinction crisis: 1) capitalism tends to degrade the conditions of its own production; 2) it must expand ceaselessly in order to survive; 3) it generates a chaotic world system, which in turn intensifies the extinction crisis."

"If you go to a Catholic Church in South Africa, it’s a far cry from what you are familiar with in France or Europe"

"You have to be very careful as you are writing. Not too much preaching or teaching at the expense of entertainment. At the same time, you don’t want to be superficial."

"My job as a novelist is to record what happened back then, but to also raise a flag, to caution that the country still has some unfinished business"

"We pretend that queerness or homosexuality is a new phenomenon. It’s always been there. It’s there in our songs and historical books but it’s something that we’re, like, ashamed of"

"another stereotype – at least in contemporary society – that is associated with queer men, is that they are more feminine, which again is not true"

"If we don’t resolve the issue of land redistribution decisively, and in a manner that takes full cognisance of the extent to which the majority was robbed, it may come to haunt us. It happened to our neighbour, Zimbabwe."

"If I want to tell a story successfully in a manner that is going to grab my readers, I have to be competitive, I can’t write as if I’m writing back in the 1960s"

"As a novelist, I am concerned with the ways in which communities transform their historical experience into the symbolic terms of myth, and then use mythologised narratives of the past to organise their responses to real-world, present-day crises and events"

"systematically and deliberately tackle heavy subjects in my writing"

"South African history, particularly that which has been forgotten or generally unknown, into the forefront so that it may not disappear into the past…to reignite unfinished conversations around issues of race, identity and land, for example"

"Writing a novel is like running a marathon"

"I’ve seen some historical novelists playing with facts, that is just distasteful, disrespectful as to history"

"Migration impacted the lives of black people a lot in South Africa – forced migration – because it was always against our own will"

"I still believe that the liberation theology movement did make an impact"

"Historical fiction can be a powerful tool in the hands of a writer who is also an activist"

"Yes. Christianity, to many black people – especially in KZN1 which was then Natal or Zululand – was an escape"

"I wanted to explore black people’s presence in the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. Because in all the texts that I’ve read, both nonfiction and fiction, black people are absent, so I wanted to bring that"

"We have yet to formulate or to forge a common identity that says “South Africa""

"We’re a country that is trying to find itself as a nation. We are not a nation"

"Being that young, I had to navigate the precarious space of being a colleague to these men, but also to be a child to them. When they were wrong on editorial matters, it was difficult for me to categorically tell them they were incorrect. I had to find euphemisms to put my points across. I didn’t always succeed"

"Contrary to popular belief, writing a short story is more difficult than writing a novel. A short story needs a clear focus, from beginning to end. In a novel there can be unnecessary deviations — which you can’t afford in a short story"

"The South African publishing industry is still largely in white hands."

"I have realised that the so called writer's block comes when the writing muscle does not get exercised as often as it should be"

"Historical novels show us how the origins of many present-day problems lie in the past; they are vehicles for the necessary journeys that nations must take to be healed; they help us reimagine ourselves in the present day"

"the people who colonized us used religion as an excuse, as an entry point, into this country."

"fiction projects today’s reality into the future much better than nonfiction"

"If you were a foreigner coming to South Africa, and you read the books, you will think black people do not exist"

"I find it works to draw people because history can be intimidating. But if you infuse it with some humor, it becomes more palatable in a way"

"I am not a reporter, I write opinions"

"the priests have been guilty of many, many things in their private capacity, not as representative of the church per se – you know, the child abuse and all those things"

"So they used religion – Christianity to be more specific – to deceive us"

"We dance! This is Africa"

"The faunal sample from Kadzi, an Early Iron Age site in the Zambezi Valley, is the first substantial sample for that period and region in Zimbabwe."

"The site appears to have been a permanent or semipermanent settlement. The sample consists mainly of bovid remains, dominated by buffalo as a single species, suggesting special hunting skills."

"The presence of some domestic animals proves that these animals were available to the inhabitants of the site. Their status in the community is, however, uncertain. Possible explanations for the small number of cattle fragments could be the result of paucity of livestock for environmental or other reasons, or may reflect differential disposal of cattle bones as part of ritual expression."

"For girls to flourish their voices must be heard, their choices honoured, and their right to bodily integrity affirmed."

"For girls to flourish our world must be safe, our environment clean, our planet healthy"

"When girls flourish the whole world flourishes."

"we have to search our souls in order to find our own truth, to understand when we have been responsible for perpetuating inequality whether explicitly or complicitly. It is a painful process, but only then can we address it."

"Privilege is there is almost nothing about you that I have to know, and yet you know so much about me."

"I am working to create a world that is good for girls."

"like every LGBTQIA+ child who has come out of the closet only to be thrown out of the house, I feel bereft. The South African church that was the mother of my faith has disowned me."

"If you conceptualize leadership as power over people, Ubuntu doesn’t have a place in that conceptualization. If you conceptualize leadership as power with people, it completely changes the way you operate, even as a leader."

"To me, authentic leadership is leadership from the heart; from the center: that one recognizes the core of one’s being and leads from that space."

"Forgiveness is not easy; it can seem like an impossible task. According to Mpho, only through walking this fourfold path, we free ourselves from the endless cycle of pain and retribution."

"This kind of racism was rife in the early years of our democracy. It relegated whites to "second class citizens", unable to state a fact if any black person might be offended by it. This warped logic has thankfully diminished somewhat due to many (black and white) South Africans rejecting it for the nonsense that it is."

"Before transformation there must be the belief that transformation is possible, and the willingness to be transformed."

"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.'"