People From Johannesburg

"As we did before in 1994, I feel we have a capacity to do so again. We succeeded in resolving our problems by peaceful means when everybody expected war and violence... We have one of the best constitutions in the world. We should be proud of this constitution, which provides the framework for a functioning multiparty democracy, independent courts and other institutions that stand for [the] advancement of human rights... He said the country had already held three elections and that two presidents had relinquished their power through constitutional means. Although former president Thabo Mbeki had left under difficult conditions, even that had been done constitutionally... These are all signs of growing constitutional maturity. Our democracy is growing up and there are open debates which will take us to robust contestations."

"Personally, my relationship with P. W. Botha was often strained. I did not like his overbearing leadership style and was opposed to the intrusion of the State Security Council system into virtually every facet of government. After I became leader of the National Party in February 1989, I did my best to ensure that P. W. Botha would be able to end his term as president with full dignity and decorum. Unfortunately, this was not to be."

"I have great sympathy with America. It's very, it's very tough to be the only remaining superpower in the world."

"There are a number of imperfections in the new South Africa where I would have hoped that things would be better, but on balance I think we have basically achieved what we set out to achieve. And if I were to draw balance sheets on where South Africa stands now, I would say that the positive outweighs the negative by far. There is a tendency by commentators across the world to focus on the few negatives which are quite negative, like how are we handling AIDS, like our role vis-à-vis Zimbabwe. But the positives – the stability in South Africa, the adherence to well-balanced economic policies, fighting inflation, doing all the right things in order to lay the basis and the foundation for sustained economic growth – are in place."

"We have failed to bring justice. We cannot build the future on injustice."

"[S]anctions should be reserved, if we think international, for extremely serious situations."

"We are struggling with racism, but racism is also alive and well in many other countries. And what we must overcome is racism being the cause of conflict. And what we need to recognize human beings as human beings; to award merit."

"Racism is a part of a problem, a world problem, which has to be overcome."

"I prefer to live in South Africa because it's a wonderful country; because I've been there for 300 years."

"[M]y ideal is that what we should do is to, to also rise above that and to achieve true non-racialism."

"Nigeria, it's a beautiful country with a great potential and I believe that in that part of the continent, Nigeria, once it sorts out its own problems, have a crucial role to play, like South Africa has in the more southern part of our continent."

"Yes, I'm an African, born and bred. My forebears arrived in South Africa in 1688. My later forebears fought the first modern anti-colonial war on the continent of Africa, against Great Britain. I'm an African, through and through, and the fact that I'm white does not detract from my total commitment to my country and through my country, to our continent."

"I apologize in my capacity as leader of the NP to the millions who suffered wrenching disruption of forced removals; who suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination."

"Mandela has walked a long road and now stands at the top of the hill. A traveler would sit down and admire the view. But a man of destiny knows that beyond this hill lies another and another. The journey is never complete. As he contemplates the next hill I hold out my hand in friendship and in cooperation. I should like to make clear that I believe that my political task is just beginning. Everything that we have done so far - the four years of difficult and often frustrating negotiations, the problems and the crises - have been simply a preparation for the work that lies ahead. The greatest challenge which we will face in the government of national unity will be to defend and nurture our new constitution. Our greatest task will be to ensure our young and vulnerable democracy will take root and flourish."

"Peace does not simply mean the absence of conflict... There can therefore be no real peace without justice or consent... Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign... It is very significant that there has never been a war between genuine and universal democracies. There have been countless wars between totalitarian and authoritarian states. There have been wars between democracies and dictatorships - most often in defense of democratic values ​​or in response to aggression."

"There are powers that are trying to manipulate our country's history by trying to portray it as dark, suppressive and unfair... Yes, we have made mistakes. Yes, we have often sinned and we don't deny this. But that we were evil, malignant and mean–to that we say "no"!"

"If our old policy, which was so unpopular in many circles, could work, then we would have surely clung to it. But as responsible leaders charged with the government of the country, we came to the conclusion that the policy we had planned could simply not work."

"History has placed a tremendous responsibility on the shoulders of this country's leadership, namely the responsibility of moving our country away from the current course of conflict and confrontation... The hope of millions of South Africans is fixed on us. The future of southern Africa depends on us. We dare not waver or fail."

"We're not doing what we do because of sanctions. We're doing what we do because we believe it is right."

"I'm certain about my decision [to divorce you]. Stop hoping."

"I'm a Christian. I'm a South African. I'm an Afrikaner. I'm a lawyer. I love my country, and I think that this country has a great future. In that sense of the word, I`m a practical idealist."

"Here at the crossroads of our history, we need to turn our backs on the past."

"If we dwell on real or imagined sins of the past, we shall never be able to find one another in the present, nor shall we be able to work together on building the future."

"No conception of democracy as geared toward reducing domination can ignore the relations between the political system and the distribution of income and wealth."

"Although this is less often commented on in the academic literature, democracy is as much about opposition to the arbitrary exercise of power as it is about collective self-government...."

"The further institutional designers try to move along the continuum toward explicit proactive systems that force integration in exclusionary and racist societies, the more they will learn about how much redesign of ethnic antipathy is feasible in them."

"A principled commitment to democracy offers a way out of this bind which protagonists on both sides of the debate appear not to have noticed."

"The principles and practices of democracy continue to spread ever more widely, and it is hard to imagine that there is a corner of the globe into which they will not eventually penetrate. But the euphoria of democratic revolutions is typically short-lived, and its attainment seems typically to be followed by disgruntlement and even cynicism about the actual operation of democratic institutions. It might be widely accepted that democracy is a good thing, yet it is equally apparent that democrats have much work to do in improving the performance of democratic institutions. Of course, it is far easier to perceive the need for reform than to prescribe specific proposals."

"An enduring embarrassment of democratic theory is that it seems impotent when faced with questions about its own scope."

"It is hard not to sympathize with Shapiro's "show me the beef" approach to political theory. Rational choice theory has not revolutionized political science in the same way it has revolutionized economics. By and large, rational choice theorists have taken hold of the "high theory" segment of political science departments, but their methods are honored mostly in the breach when students go on to study real political problems. However, it is also hard (at least for this writer) not to sympathize with the intention of political theorists to ground their subject analytically, as has been done in economics and biology. The rational choice theorists in political science may not yet have succeeded, but they cannot be faulted for attempting to build an analytical political theory. Shapiro comes off as the alchemist who doesn't mind dirtying his hands in chemical soups, but who criticizes the chemists because they haven't yet solve the problem of the transmutation of the elements. Why has rational choice theory failed? Shapiro's answer is that all "reductivist" theory must fail. However, all science is reductivist, and tolerates emergent properties of complex systems only after sustained failure to model them analytically. Thus, Shapiro is really an anti-science realist. The correct answer, I believe is that rational choice theorists learned the wrong lesson from Mancur Olson. Clearly large-scale collective action exists in the world, and without such action, human society as we know it could not exist. Voting itself is an example that violates Mancur Olson's theory, as are the collective actions that gave rise to representative institutions, political democracy, striking down of racially discriminatory institutions, and some measure of gender equality. What we must give up in Mancur Olson's argument is not his postulate of rationality, but rather his postulate that rationality implies self-interest. This, the rational choice school in political science has not done."

"So Sen is right that democracy can be pressed into the service of reducing injustice. Indeed this can happen against expectations. Had there been neoclassical economists around in the late eighteenth century, they would have scoffed at the possibility of abolishing the slave trade. In the absence of a system of multilateral enforcement, Britain had to bear the enormous expense unilaterally—over several decades—without any obvious prospect of a return. whether democracy fosters or hinders economic growth."

"First let me persuade you of my metaphysics and epistemology, then my theory of science, then my ethics and social theory, and then having done all that, I will convince you of my political theory. Over the past two decades, I have become convinced that this is a mug’s game... The reason Plato, Hobbes, Marx, Mill, and Rawls (many others could be named) garner widespread attention as political theorists has much more to do with their destinations than with their starting points."

"Wealthy people used to find democracy frightening. The reason was simple: the poor, once enfranchised, should be expected to soak the rich. This fear bred elite resistance to expanding the franchise, particularly beyond the propertied classes. Nor did this fear, and the reasoning behind it, go unnoticed on the political left."

"Political theorists often fail to appreciate that arguments about how politics ought to be organized typically depend on relational claims involving agents, actions, legitimacy, and ends."

"The quest for heroic adventure then is a quest for the gospel, although it might not be seen that way by everyone."

"Christianity is an adventure of the spirit or it is not Christianity."

"In missional churches, the baby birds have been pushed out of the nest and are learning to fly for themselves."

"The fact is that if Jesus’s future kingdom is secure, those who trust in its coming will enact it now."

"Think of mission like the paddles of a defibrillator applied to the chest of a dying church."

"Let’s stop kidding ourselves — there are too many instances of Christians worshiping sublimely every Sunday, but never making an impact beyond the congregation, never experiencing the powerful beauty of communitas, and never going deeper in discipleship."

"Most churches don’t have the resources for these tricks and inducements but are still bound to the imagination that church happens on a Sunday in a building."

"Put simply, the church finds itself in a post-Christendom era, and it had better do some serious reflection or face increasing decline and eventual irrelevance."

"A retreatist spirituality is not a spirituality that can, or will, transform the world in Jesus’s name."

"Mission is the practical demonstration, whether by speech or by action, of the glorious lordship of Jesus."

"More important, Christian community is not something about which we can arbitrarily make decisions — it is not an optional extra."

"The missional church is not a new trend or the latest new technique for reaching postmodern people."

"This is why we are on record claiming that the missional conversation — refactoring mission back into the equation of church — contains the seeds of authenticity and renewal for Christianity in our time and place."

"The appetite for adventure and risk is not exclusive to young Christians. In face, it seems to be a fundamental yearning, knitted into the fabric of the human soul."

"Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase “missional church” lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity."

"If we can embrace the adventure and risk and equip our churches to lay down their lives and abandon their inherent loss-aversion, who knows what innovation, what freshness, what new insights from the Spirit will emerge."