South Africa Quotes - Page 5

• Press Freedom will never be under threat in South Africa for as long as the ANC is the majority party

  Nelson Mandela

  Party, Long, Majority

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• If Nature here wishes to make a mountain, she runs a range for five hundred miles; if a plain, she levels eighty; if a rock, she tilts five thousand feet of strata on end; our skies are higher and more intensely blue; our waves larger than others; our rivers fiercer. There is nothing measured, small nor petty in South Africa.

  Olive Schreiner

  Running, Rocks, Blue

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• For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.

  Athol Fugard

  Believe, Writing, Issues

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• Sandy deWitt at TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris in Johannesburg, South Africa, taught me to make a decision and stick with it. Every day we're faced with reasons why we shouldn't do good work: it's too scary, too hard to pull off, there's no time, no money, etc. You have to be brave and commit to your choices in the face of adversity. If you waver, nothing will turn out the way you imagined it.

  Melissa Sue Anderson

  Adversity, Decision, Brave

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• Let us join hands and build a truly South African nation.

  Nelson Mandela

  Hands, South, Nations

  Nelson Mandela (2003). “Nelson Mandela: from freedom to the future : tributes and speeches”, Jonathan Ball Publishers

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• The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home amongst compatriots

  Nelson Mandela

  Home, Two, Way

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• As we mourn President Mandela’s passing we must ask ourselves the fundamental question - what shall we do to respond to the tasks of building a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, a people-centred society free of hunger, poverty, disease and inequality, as well as Africa’s renaissance, to whose attainment President Nelson Mandela dedicated his whole life?

  Thabo Mbeki

  Hunger Poverty, People, President

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• Very sad to hear about the passing of Nelson Mandela. He was a true inspiration for human rights and equality for South Africa and the reason apartheid no longer exists there. The world will never forget his capacity for forgiveness and magnanimity. RIP

  Bryan Adams

  Rip, Inspiration, Rights

  FaceBook post by Bryan Adams from Dec 06, 2013

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• Greece is the mother of democracy and South Africa is its youngest daughter

  Nelson Mandela

  Daughter, Mother, Democracy

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• I engaged upon those activities because I believed that, in the dangerous circumstances which have been created in South Africa, it was my duty to do so.

  Bram Fischer

  Engagement, Duty, Dangerous

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• Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?

  Walter E. Williams

  People, World, Slavery

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• To have been selected to represent Team South Africa at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the individual 400m and the 4x400m relay is a real honor and I am so pleased that years of hard work, determination and sacrifice have all come together.

  Oscar Pistorius

  Determination, Real, Team

  "'Blade runner' Pistorius handed dream double Olympic ticket", www.cnn.com. July 5, 2012.

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• We must stop climate change. And we can, if we use the tactics that worked in South Africa against the worst carbon emitters.

  Desmond Tutu

  Climate, Use, Tactics

  "We need an apartheid-style boycott to save the planet" by Desmond Tutu, www.theguardian.com. April 10, 2014.

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• All of my life had been spent in the shadow of apartheid. And when South Africa went through its extraordinary change in 1994, it was like having spent a lifetime in a boxing ring with an opponent and suddenly finding yourself in that boxing ring with nobody else and realising you've to take the gloves off and get out and reinvent yourself.

  Athol Fugard

  Boxing, Finding Yourself, Shadow

  "I'm a storyteller, that's all" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. March 18, 2002.

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• What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.

  Chris Abani

  Philosophy, Compassion, Simple

  "On humanity". Ted Talks, www.ted.com. February, 2008.

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• To achieve effectiveness and legitimacy it is time to scrap the right of veto given to permanent members of the UN, or at least severely restrict its use. It is also time to either abandon the idea of permanent membership or broaden it to reflect the rise of non-Western states to the status of global leaders (e.g. Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa), and to downgrade European representation by either giving the European Union a single seat or rotating a European state among Germany, France, UK, and Italy.

  Richard A. Falk

  Turkeys, Ideas, Effectiveness

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• With the Cuban presence in Namibia it was possible to achieve the security and real freedom of that country and the end of Apartheid in South Africa, with the modest contribution of the international military presence in Africa.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Country, Real, Military

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The role that Cuba played and the lives of those 2,077 Cubans, whose mothers and families mourn for having lost their children in Africa, helped achieve the true security and independence of Angola. It was a contribution because in the end the Angolan people were the ones who decided that. We also contributed in a definitive way securing the independence of Namibia after years that a United Nations resolution was being ignored by South Africa and the western powers.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Mother, Children, Years

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• When the nuclear weapons were sent to the racist South African government, where a few million white people subjugated more than 13 million black people, it was so they could use them against the Cuban forces that were defending Angola. These things have not been written down but they need to be told as part of the reality of history which should not be distorted the way the historians connected to the power elite tend to do.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Reality, Government, White

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• The United States was the one nullifying any attempt in the Security Council of the United Nations to sanction those fascist governments, really segregationist and racist. The same thing it is doing for Israel is what it used to do for South Africa who ended up having seven nuclear weapons. Why didn't they act against them like they did against Iraq for the so called weapons of mass destruction during Bush that never existed in the first place?

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Government, Mass Destruction, Israel

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• I have found that the people in South Africa are fabulous. Thy are receptive and value fulfilling their lives. They are highly spirited and have dreams and desires to serve. I have learned how resourceful and efficient many people are able to live and how creative they can be and how much love they have for the families and extended loved ones. I love the spirit of South Africans.

  John Frederick Demartini

  Dream, People, Creative

  Source: blog.exclus1ves.co.za

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• [To the South African parliament:] I do not know why we equate - and with the examples before us - a white skin with civilization.

  Helen Suzman

  Civilization, White, Skins

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• It was the South African Government that has introduced politics into sport by decreeing politically that no non-white person will represent their country. They introduced politics into sport." And Don [Bradman] was a very shrewd old bloke, and he looked at me for about thirty seconds and then he said, "Bob, I've got no answer to that." And that was it.

  Bob Hawke

  Sports, Country, Government

  Source: www.commonwealthoralhistories.org

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• I led the fight here against apartheid as President of the ACTU, including particularly the Springbok tour in 1971. And that led to the banning of the South African cricket tour which had been scheduled - that was something that I sorted out with Sir Donald Bradman. That was interesting.

  Bob Hawke

  Fighting, Interesting, President

  Source: www.commonwealthoralhistories.org

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• I came back from university thinking I knew all about politics and racism, not knowing my dad had been one of the youngest-serving Labour councillors in the town and had refused to work in South Africa years ago because of the situation there. And he's never mentioned it - you just find out. That's a real man to me. A sleeping lion.

  Johnny Vegas

  Dad, Real, Sleep

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