South Africa Quotes

I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country.

MOUNT PLAASMOORDEIf ever you visit South AfricaAnd doLeave the brilliant beaches of Cape Town for a momentClimb Mount Plaasmoorde Witkruis monumentAnd you’ll see the victims of apartheidWhite crosses marking a thousand white victimsPlanted in the earth of a million black victimsThey lie dissolved in the humus of the soilsThey were too many to have their own marked gravesToo many to build black crosses forAnd just too hard to forget aboutBecause they make the soil under your feet black

Dauglas Dauglas

Even if Zuma was to develop the authoritarian impulses of a Mugabe, he would be checked—not least by his own party, which set a continental precedent by ousting Thabo Mbeki in 2007, after it felt he had outstayed his welcome by seeking a third term as party president. The ANC appears to have set itself against that deathtrap of African democracy: the ruler for life.

Mark Gevisser

The bad parts of the statute are not judicially severable, I consider, from the rest of its provisions that deal with imprisonment. Their roots are entangled too tenaciously in the surrounding soil for a clean extraction to be feasible. The conclusion to which I accordingly come is that we are left with no option but to declare those provisions as a whole to be constitutionally invalid on account of their objectionable overbreadth.

John Didcott

If the good is not dependent on the bad and can be separated from it, one gives effect to the good that remains after the separation if it still gives effect to the main objective.

Johann Kriegler

Young girls frequently report that their early sexual experiences were coerced. In a study in South Africa, 30 percent of girls report that their first sexual intercourse was forced. In rural Malawi, 55 percent of adolescent girls surveyed report that they were often forced to have sex.

Njovana Watts

There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called 'state security' in a throwback to both apartheid and the ANC's old Stalinist past), police and communications are all die-hard Zuma loyalists. Whatever their line functions, they will also play the role they have played so ably to date: keeping Zuma out of court—and making sure the state serves Zuma as it once did Mbeki.

Mark Gevisser

As a South African I honestly cannot understand how people can't see South Africa as a unique nation, untied by ties of history, bonds of suffering, victory, struggles, hope - and in more ways than I ever before thought possible - blood.

Christina Engela

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.

Mark Gevisser

Here was a temporary solution. Parole would get Mofokeng and Mokoena out of jail as quickly as possible. Other details could be sorted out later. I accompanied Nyambi to Kroonstad jail at the end of October and remember that as he told Mofokeng and Mokoena the news—that they would be home for Christmas—smiles slowly but surely transformed the sombre, cautious expressions on their faces.Big problem: it was discovered in December, a full two months after the judgment was made, that the court order does not mention the NCCS at all. Consequently, the NCCS interpreted the court's order as having removed the NCCS's jurisdiction to deal with any "lifers" sentenced pre-1994. The members of the NCCS packed their briefcases and went home.No one knows why the judgment didn't mention the NCCS; maybe the judge who wrote it, Justice Bess Nkabinde, simply didn't know how the parole system operates; but eight of her fellow judges, the best in the land, found with her.The Mofokeng and Mokoena families, who are from 'the poorest of the poor', as the ANC likes to say, are distraught.But the rest—the law men, the politicians and the government ministers—well, quite frankly, they don't seem to give a fig. Zuma has gone on holiday, to host his famous annual Christmas party for children. Mapisa-Nqakula has also gone on holiday. Mofokeng and Mokoena remain where they were put 17 years ago, despite not having committed any crime.

Jeremy Gordin

This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. It is about good governance, and this is a universal value, as relevant to an African village as it is to Westminster. If you are unable to keep your appetites in check, you are inevitably going to live beyond your means. And this means you are going to become vulnerable to patronage and even corruption. That is why Jacob Zuma's 'polygamy' is his achilles heel.

Mark Gevisser

Some people will hate you for not loving them.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We are way less likely to love someone just because they love us than we are to hate someone just because they hate us.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The fact that the person who you are sleeping with is also sleeping with another person or other people does not necessarily mean that he or she does not love you. And the fact that you are the only person who someone is sleeping with does not necessarily mean that he or she loves you.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A seemingly simple task like taking a bath or wearing a condom feels like multitasking to someone who suffers from hemiplegia or has only one hand.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Most men would no longer enjoy conversing with most women if they stopped bringing their vaginas along.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A relationship is likely to last way longer, if each partner convinces or has convinced themselves that they do not deserve their partner, even if that is not true.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Adults who use big words in order to seem intelligent are annoying, especially those who are not intelligent.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Some people hate people who are overconfident, only because their overconfidence reminds them of their underconfidence.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If we were not impressed by job titles, suits, and jargon, we would demand that financial advisors show us their personal bank statements before they tell us what we could or should do with our own money.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To ask a man whether or not he has a girlfriend is to talk about his sex life. If you disagree with that, then how in the name of God do you differentiate between a man’s girlfriend and a girl that is a friend to the man?

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

For their never-ending endeavours to obtain or retain wealth, countries desperately need companies, because they—unlike most human beings—have the means of production, and human beings, because they—unlike all companies—have the means of reproduction.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Although they probably know that some children were used and some children are used as miners, most adults are ignorant of the chocolate industry’s use of minors.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Millions of business people are each constantly forced to choose between their desire to not be a bad person and their desire to be a good business person, that is to say, to make as much money as they possibly can by maximizing their revenue while minimizing the cost of producing whatever it is that they sell.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Many millions of pregnancies—many if not most of which have each led to the birth of at least one child—were each used as nothing but a conspicuous means to a secret end called the evasion of abortion.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The world economy would collapse if a significant number of people were to realize and then act on the realization that it is possible to enjoy many if not most of the things that they enjoy without first having to own them.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When selecting a one-night stand, a heterosexual woman who is materialistic is a trillion times more likely to choose a sexually unattractive poor man who seems rich over a sexually attractive rich man who seems poor.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Loneliness tortures many if not most of the elderly more intensely and more frequently than it torments many if not most of us who will never be or have not yet been pushed or pulled into old age.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Patriotism is the narcissism of countries.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Greed is a contagious mental illness without which civilization as we know it would not have been possible.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Just like how most if not all poor boys look up to and aspire to someday be rich men, most if not all underdeveloped and developing countries look up to and aspire to someday be developed countries.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Not a few millions of parents strongly hope that their own children will step in by instantly becoming their own parents’ foster parents, if and when the parents reach their second childhood.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Among other possibilities, money was invented to make it possible for a foolish man to control wise men; a weak man, strong men; a child, old men; an ignorant man, knowledgeable men; and for a dwarf to control giants.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To some believers, being on the pill or using a condom is a nonverbal way of telling God to go to hell.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

South Africa Quotes

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