Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To go back means defeat.
The apartheid system renounces no violence.
Apartheid is inherently a practice of violence.
Apartheid either is or is not. And it must not be.
For decades, we resisted violence - until Sharpeville.
In South Africa, I feel I am a stranger, at best an animal.
We seek to create a united Democratic and non-racial society.
The sanctions will not kill us. It's apartheid that's killing us.
We all belong to South Africa, and South Africa belongs to us all.
The Soviet Union was a very useful ally in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The true facts are not always obvious. They often have to be looked for.
The more pressure you bring from without, the less internal pressure is necessary.
I was just an ordinary student. I'd always gotten along with authorities quite well.
The U.S. is the last country that should see itself as an ally of the apartheid system.
In Holy Cross, I came to like school, to like studying in a way I had never done before.
It was always my desire to strike new ground and help to lend weight where it was most required.
There is no way a spirit of resistance that has sunk so deep in the population can be repressed.
We believe that the world, too, can destroy apartheid, firstly by striking at the economy of South Africa.
I would not hesitate to vote for a white person as president if I thought he was the best person for the job.
Who is a terrorist? Is it not the person who has been persecuting human beings simply because they are black?
Our target is not negotiations, it is the end of the apartheid system. There can be no compromise about that.
The violence associated with the A.N.C. is minimal, infinitesimal next to the violence of the apartheid regime.
Whites, like ourselves, belong to our country. They are compatriots, fellow citizens... we see them as Africans.
The people of South Africa are ready to stand up to the oppressions of the Pretoria regime, and they are ready to fight back.
In May 1961, South Africa was to be declared a Nationalist Republic. There was a white referendum, but no African was consulted.
The A.N.C. is a national movement. We all - Communists and non-Communists alike - want a nonracial, democratic, united South Africa.
We were very lucky. My mother and stepmothers were on very, very good terms, and so we, the children, grew up as brothers and sisters.
We have a vision of South Africa in which black and white shall live and work together as equals in conditions of peace and prosperity.
The A.N.C. was established in 1912 and the S.A. Communist Party in 1921, and so there has been an overlapping of membership all along the line.
The children of any nation are its future. A country, a movement, a person that does not value its youth and children does not deserve its future.
The fight for freedom must go on until it is won; until our country is free and happy and peaceful as part of the community of man, we cannot rest.
It may be that apartheid brings such stupendous economic advantages to countries that they would sooner have apartheid than permit its destruction.
We have got to move away from the concept of race and color because that is what apartheid is. We cannot end apartheid if we retain these concepts.
Racial discrimination, South Africa's economic power, its oppression and exploitation of all the black peoples, are part and parcel of the same thing.
Those who want to perpetuate apartheid also seek to divert your attention to the false issue of communism, to send the entire American public on a witch hunt.
There is nothing in ANC policy which calls for attacks on civilians in supermarkets, schools, and cinemas unless these are regarded as military installations.
If apartheid is removed, then the violence that is necessary to maintain it will be removed along with the pressures from apartheid which create a violent response.
This uprising of 1976-77 was, of course, the historic watershed... Within a short period of time, it propelled into the forefront of our struggle millions of young people.
It is often suggested that the A.N.C. is controlled by the Communist Party, by Communists. Well, I have been long enough in the A.N.C. to know that that has never been true.
We believe it is comprehensive international sanctions against the white regime that will save us from the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of South Africans, black and white.
How can it be said we should use only constitutional means in our struggle, when all resistance is illegal and we have no way to change the brutal realities of the racism regime?
I didn't really want to be a teacher, but there was nothing else I could be. Most of those who went to the university became teachers. It was just the racial restriction on Africans.
Whoever says that sanctions will only deteriorate the situations of blacks in South Africa does not know the criminal, murderous character of genocide that represents the system of apartheid.
Mandela drafted the M Plan, a simple, commonsense plan for organization on a street basis so that Congress volunteers would be in daily touch with the people, alert to their needs and able to mobilize them.
My problem in calling for pressures on South Africa is to convince the youth to convince their governments and people that it is not the South African goods that are cheap, but the forced labor of the Africans.
It was of limited usefulness to head great rallies. The government did not listen, and, soon enough, the tear gas and the muzzles of the guns were turned against the people. The justice of our cries went unrecognized.
The popularity of leaders like Mandela was an invitation to counter-attack by the government. Mandela was banned from speaking, from attending gatherings, from leaving Johannesburg, from belonging to any organization.
Using the power you derive from the discovery of the truth about racism in South Africa, you will help us to remake our part of the world into a corner of the globe on which all - of which all of humanity can be proud.
Responsibility for the proper conduct of children was not confined to their parents only. When they misbehaved, they misbehaved against the community. And a senior member of the community was expected to do something about it.
We had to forge an alliance of strength based not on colour but on commitment to the total abolition of apartheid and oppression; we would seek allies, of whatever colour, as long as they were totally agreed on our liberation aims.