Apartheid Quotes - Page 6

• So what you do [under apartheid system] is you convince black people that the reason they are being oppressed is because there are some within their community who just can't behave. And if only they could behave, then everyone else would have more freedoms and liberties, which, of course, is not true.

  Trevor Noah

  People, Community, Black

  Source: www.npr.org

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• What the apartheid system was really good at doing was convincing groups to hate one another.

  Trevor Noah

  Hate, Groups, Convincing

  "Trevor Noah Says He Grew Up 'In The Shadow Of A Giant' (His Mom)". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 16, 2016.

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• The private schools and the independent schools like Oprah's are really doing well because they've got the best of everything but it certainly puts the spotlight on a system of public education that is still reeling from the apartheid years [in South Africa].

  Charlayne Hunter-Gault

  School, Independent, Years

  "Africa Update: Oprah Winfrey's Work with Schoolgirls". "New & Notes" with Farai Chideya, www.npr.org. January 8, 2007".

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• The question of Israeli apartheid was anathema a decade ago. Now it's even talked about by top Israeli officials, who say - they differ on the timing: We say it's already there; they say that if we don't do something different, we're going to face apartheid.

  Phyllis Bennis

  Different, Faces, Timing

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• People in apartheid South Africa can tell you that God cursed black people when they cursed Him. And so the hermetic people were condemned to be drawers of water and of wood.

  Desmond Tutu

  People, Water, Black

  Interview with Amina Chaudary, www.theislamicmonthly.com. June 17, 2012.

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• We struggled against apartheid because we were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about. It is the same with homosexuality. The orientation is a given, not a matter of choice. It would be crazy for someone to choose to be gay, given the homophobia that is present.

  Desmond Tutu

  Crazy, Gay, Choices

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• The kids growing up in the apartheid era were so restricted and angry - if they spoke out against it, they were thrown in jail.

  Malik Bendjelloul

  Growing Up, Kids, Jail

  "Malik Bendjelloul's search for a genius". Interview with Hannah Lack, www.dazeddigital.com. September 1, 2013.

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• People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the "whites only" signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery.

  Assata Shakur

  People, Colonialism, Slavery

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• We [ with Brian Mulroney and Rajiv Gandhi] went to the meeting in Canada [the 1987 Vancouver CHOGM] and I said to them there that sanctions weren't working; they were just being busted. And it did seem to me that one way that we could bring the apartheid regime down would be if we did mount an effective investment sanction.

  Bob Hawke

  Vancouver, Would Be, Canada

  Source: www.commonwealthoralhistories.org

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• I rang my friend Jim Wolfensohn, who was then running a private commercial bank in New York. I said, "Come up to Vancouver", and he did. I put my proposition to him. He said, "I think it could work." I said, "Will you help us?" He said, "Yes." So, I set aside senior people in our treasury and they worked with Wolfensohn and the investment sanctions were applied. And that's what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid.

  Bob Hawke

  Senior, Running, New York

  Source: www.commonwealthoralhistories.org

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• There is a reason why Nelson Mandela went to Cuba to praise Castro and thank the Cuban people almost as soon as he got out of jail. That's a third world reaction and they understand it. Cuba played an enormous role in the liberation of Africa and the overthrow of Apartheid, sending doctors and teachers to the poorest places in the world, to Haiti, to Pakistan after the earthquake, almost everywhere. The internationalism is just astonishing. I don't think there has been anything like it in history.

  Noam Chomsky

  Teacher, Thinking, Doctors

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

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• I'm not interested in embarrassing the United States. We as a nation need to foster a broader understanding of national security, and when in the name of national security the US government both overtly and covertly aligns itself with the apartheid state and against heroic freedom fighters for racial justice ... Not only in 1962 but also keeping in mind that Mandela was on the US terror watch list until 2008, that kind of myopic understanding of national security has devastating consequences.

  Ryan Shapiro

  Government, Names, Justice

  Source: news.vice.com

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• Already there exists a growing international concern that Israel has become "an apartheid state" pursuing policies manifesting a "settler colonial" mentality. Such perceptions pose a challenge to postcolonial international society that will not be indefinitely ignored, especially if Palestinians achieve greater unity and tactical focus.

  Richard A. Falk

  Israel, Focus, Challenges

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I think we give Jimmy Carter too much credit to think he knew what was going to happen when he used the word "apartheid." It's provocative, but it was like a nuclear bomb in Israel. And yet that word is used all the time in the Israeli press. There's a double standard there. He probably picked it up in Israel, as it's commonly discussed. I'd be a little surprised if he understood how it was going to be used against him. He doesn't have a highly developed emotional detector. As a politician, that was a weakness.

  Lawrence Wright

  Thinking, Emotional, Giving

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Sometimes, recently Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed a clash between wrong and wrong. It is not as simple as fascism was. Every decent man had to be against fascism, period. It is not as simple as apartheid or colonialism or racism or misogyny. It is not simple because the Palestinians have no other land. They are absolutely right about this. The Israeli Jews also have no other land and they are absolutely right about this. It is a tragedy of two peoples claiming the same very small country, about the size of New Jersey.

  Amos Oz

  Country, Simple, Men

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• I grew up in the American South, the segregated South. Now we have a black man who is president. It was an age of apartheid, and now that's over. It was an age of two superpowers frozen in a cold war, and now that's resolved. So history marches on, except for this Arab-Israel conflict, which seems to have a claim on being eternal.

  Lawrence Wright

  War, Men, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There must be an end to white monopoly on political power, and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratized.

  Nelson Mandela

  White, Political, Fundamentals

  Rally Address Following Release From Pollsmoor Prison, delivered 11 February 1990, Cape Town, South Africa

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• Singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' all the places we've been, it takes on a different meaning everywhere. When you sing the line, 'How many years can a people exist, before they're allowed to be free?' in a prison yard for political prisoners in El Salvador; if you have sung it to a group of union organizers, who have all been in jail, in South Korea; if you've sung to Jews in the Soviet Union who have been refused exit visas; if you've sung it with Bishop Tutu protesting apartheid, the song breathes, it lives, it has a contemporary currency.

  Mary Travers

  Song, Wind, Jail

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• In this time, we incorporate money and media, and it's split up like apartheid, where when you say "hip-hop," you think just rap records. People might have forgot about all the other elements in hip-hop. Now we're back out there again, trying to get people back to the fifth element, the knowledge. To know to respect the whole culture, especially to you radio stations that claim to be hip-hop and you're not, because if you was a hip-hop radio station, why do you just play one aspect of hip-hop and rap, which is gangsta rap?

  Afrika Bambaataa

  Rap, Gangsta, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Lethal Weapon 2 used the platform to talk about the apartheid system. That was a very important moment for us.

  Danny Glover

  Important, Weapons, Moments

  Source: progressive.org

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• Mandela didn't end Apartheid in South Africa, the poor guy was in jail for 27 years, it was the African people that ended it but he was a symbol of their struggle. Or Gandhi in India, Gandhi was a great believer in non-violence and he was in and out of jail, but India became free. I think it's better to look at what people can do collectively and that's why it's so important to encourage them.

  Tony Benn

  Struggle, Thinking, People

  Source: designermagazine.tripod.com

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• Of course I had the parallel of having the early years of my life being spent during apartheid, and then having a lot of awful poverty going on around me while I lived in this bubble of middle-classness, but I was a child, and I only really started to (I hope) understand all of that fairly recently.

  St. Lucia

  Children, Years, Awful

  Source: www.planetnotion.com

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• I grew up during apartheid; there was never a day in South Africa that was just great. I love that I've had success as an actor and producer, but I know the thing my children will know most about is the work I've done with HIV. Success in life is all about humanity.

  Charlize Theron

  Children, Humanity, Done

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• I've spent a lot of time in L.A., it's always reminded me a bit of Jo'burg, which is a deeply segregated city. And L.A. is really like an apartheid city; white people just don't go to South Central. It's just a different world.

  Nick Broomfield

  Cities, White, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• South Africa has faced many problems in the past. You would understand those problems if you understood the history of the struggle to get rid of Apartheid and the struggle to establish democracy.

  Thabo Mbeki

  Struggle, Past, Democracy

  "Tregernomics Interview with President Thabo Mbeki". Interview with Adam Treger, www.mbeki.org. October 31, 2016.

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