anti-apartheid-activists

"Never mind the wind and the rain, we’ll fight."

"Women have always been in the struggle, whether in the background or in the front. Without women, the movement would never have survived."

"When we joined the struggle, we never thought of ourselves as heroes. We only thought that it was our duty."

"We went into it with our eyes open. We were not afraid, and we were prepared to face jail and brutality. We knew that our struggle was just."

"Mary Burton described Cleminshaw as “a really strong and determined woman” despite being physically frail in her later years"

"She was very alive and very alert to injustice and her concerns were for a better world;Former Cape Town mayor Gordon Oliver said"

"If Ray Alexander-Simons landed in Cape Town today, on the 7th of November 2016 and started organising workers five days later, which indeed she did when she landed in Cape Town in 1929, she would find a vastly different scenario," he said."

"She would also take a fresh look at the structure and role of the trade unions in South Africa, especially the methods of organisation and the scourge of corruption. And the duplication of trade union organisations competing against each other for members and revenue. For example, there are five unions servicing the transport industry and a large number of unions servicing the security industry - the largest security service in the world, which employs 450 000 people"

"Bishop David Russell, who worked closely with Cleminshaw in the Christian Institute, said;She never gave up, she was indefatigable. The people who knew her were tremendously impressed by her courage"

"Mrs Alexander-Simons's daughter, Ms Tanya Barben, said: "It is appropriate that the function takes place on the 7th of November for it is the date on which teenager Rachel Esther Alexandrowich (Ray Alexander) arrived in Cape Town from Latvia and it is also the anniversary of the October Revolution [which took place in Petrograd, Russia, from the 7th to the 8th of November, 1917]. She was undaunted when facing the bosses, the bargaining councils or the police forces. She sacrificed a lot, including her own family to fight for a democratic South Africa"

"One of her most important achievements was to lobby for a change to the laws on abortion,” said Burton."

"She will have in her toolbox the most vanguard industrial labour relations, processes and procedures, rights and obligations in the Labour Relations Act"

"the late activist would have her work cut for her, as she would find 3.11 million workers representing 25.3% of the workforce organised in trade unions, a shop steward movement which I believe has 300 000 men and women in almost every industry"

"She will have legislation on Employment Equity, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act which incidentally updates the one Ray and her fellow unionists fought for in the late 1920s and 30s in the last century"

"I put my head in my hands and try to get quiet, quieter and quieter, and the thin membrane, the invisible connective tissue around the part of my brain that holds my memory, that allows me to stay focused on the present, begins to slide through - emotion makes it happen easily - and through the thready openings memory begins to come through, healing memory, slowly, in great detail, slowly, there is no rush, it must be firmly built up. From this comes self-healing."

"And as if you were transported on an escalator from one floor to the other, and could not get off, so time unyieldingly transports you away from your husband's death. But the loss of a son or daughter, it pours out the sadness, also on you, no matter how long ago, it's still there, always there."

"Contemporary post-colonial geopolitics has witnessed the changing nature of the nation state. Initially conceived of as the territorial “home” of an ethnically and racially homogenous group, the notion of the nation state is increasingly characterised by difference and complexity. There are few contexts where people are not confronted by difference in the workplace, in organisations and public spaces, and as an aspect of the general body politic. The challenge therefore is how to value what different groups may bring to the collective while, at the same time, maintaining cohesive societies. In difficult economic times, this includes rejecting policies that approach difference through segregation, expulsion and ethnic cleansing in favour of inclusive political and economic measures and equitable sharing of resources. It also requires public spaces that are characterised by accessibility and safety for all raced, gendered and differently abled bodies. For organisations, the challenges cluster around such issues as how to create environments that can bring into play the strengths of difference to promote organisational goals, while at the same time enabling employees to reach their full potential, to have their contribution valued and to feel recognised and respected."

"The central question for whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa can be put simply: how to maintain privilege in a situation in which black people have achieved political power. Many stances to the new dispensation are available to white South Africans, but this article concerns only resistant white discourses, referred to as White Talk."

"Both white and black South Africans produced epistemologies of ignorance, although the terms of the contract were set by white society as the group with the dominant power."

"Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used To Be."

"Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro) will open the discussion. He has studied Architecture and Fine Art at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is published in newspapers and educational magazines and in fact is "the cartoonist for most newspapers." Milton Shain is Director of Jewish Studies at UCT and has written and edited many books on Jewish History. He has also received numerous awards both at Jerusalem and Yale Universities."

"The apartheid narratives illustrate that for ignorance to function as social regulation, subjectivities must be formed that are appropriate performers of ignorance, disciplined in cognition, affect and ethics."

"Thank you for such a stimulating and often controversial presentation. As they say: "Three Jews, four different opinions"."

"Working with the recollections of everyday experiences of apartheid collected by the Apartheid Archives project, and drawing on the emerging theorization of ignorance in the critical philosophy of race, this article explores how an ‘ignorance contract’ – the tacit agreement to entertain ignorance – lies at the heart of a society structured in racial hierarchy. Unlike the conventional theorization of ignorance that regards ignorance as a matter of faulty individual cognition, or a collective absence of yet-to-be-acquired knowledge, ignorance is understood as a social achievement with strategic value."

"We apologise for holding this meeting during the month of Ramadan. We have begun at 6.30 to allow the Parliamentarians to arrive. One of the functions of the Trust is to promote intellectual debate in post democratic South Africa. We produce a pamphlet of these monthly meetings. Many thanks to Leslie Liddell."

"Education takes the most extraordinary amount of discipline, effort and hard work. Reward is always related to this. Time management, beginning with arriving on time for lessons, is essential, but it is a very hard thing to learn."

"I must tell you that the attitude of the staff, which had been one of anger initially, changed quite fundamentally after this incident. I think what changed the dynamic was that I had experienced some of their daily reality, and the conditions under which they work."

"Today this kind of analysis is entirely obsolete, but at the time it was taken as self-evident by many activists. This kind of ideology does not respect alternative views or allow an open society."

"well-staffed schools would lose teachers and under-staffed schools would gain teachers. I supported this objective, as well as the original strategy to achieve it, which would have enabled well-staffed schools to determine which posts to lose on the basis of educational criteria."

"The challenge of transformation is to improve quality. Time management is essential but we also have to measure our performance against benchmarks. For instance we need to know how many days are spent teaching and how well learners are doing."

"It was an unusual background and I often felt a cultural clash between my school and home environments."

"It was interesting to note that every time events in our history offered people a choice between race or class solidarity, race seemed to win. Marxists were ingenious at explaining this away, but it was all rather tortuous. Marxists have to squeeze facts into their framework, to prove the historical inevitability of the working class revolution and the demise of capitalism."

"Liberals make space for people with opposing views. I believe in the falsification principle — one must always look for reasons why one may be wrong rather."

"MPs need a legal desk to explain legislation to them. When the department briefs you, you have no way of understanding. You’re not debating with effective input,”"

"The gender quota is not up for debate in the ruling party and their gains have given a fillip to women in more conservative parties."

"Women have brought a different culture to Parliament. It’s less of a beer-swilling, let’s sort things out in the bar kind of place."

"Many women say that if Parliament – the legislative arm of government – is to be the locale of power and not the executive, then women must be better trained. Many women MPs had not seen draft statutes and, having come from the trenches, were not au fait with parliamentary proceedings."

"Some women in the ANC had wanted the quota beefed up to one in two candidates. They failed in their bid, but it remains the only party with a quota of seats reserved for women"

"A measured and God-fearing woman not usually given to such outbursts"

"Whenever female members stood up, they were clearly not interested. They [male MPs] started talking on their own.”"

"If it weren’t for the ANC ladies and the pressure they put on the government, females would have been much worse off."

"In the foyer of the offices of the petroleum company where Isaac worked, a woman with tired, bleached hair and the face of a painted wax doll accidentally left near a fire and then hastily retrieved, kept guard in the little telephone exchange behind polished plate glass and mahogany."

"Anger grew inside him like a ripening seed and the tendrils of its burgeoning writhed along his bones, through his muscles, into his mind."

"Life has, for Beukes, become like a gangster movie, filled with"

"I’m not saying a person can change it tomorrow or next year. But even if you don’t get what you want today, soon, it’s a matter of pride, dignity...."

"We all good enough to be servants. Because we’re black, they think we good enough just to change their nappies."

"Trouble. There’s always trouble.’ He spoke as if trouble was something he experienced all the time, but trouble was a stranger to her."

"The old man made a small, honking, animal noise and dropped back on the bed."

"The law don't like white people being finished off. Well I didn't mos mean it. Better get out before somebody comes. I never been in here. He looked at the sprawled figure that looked like a blown down scarecrow. Well he didn't have no right living here with us Coloreds."

"That's all they know. Shooting us people."