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South Africa Quotes

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South Africa Quotes

“Most of the men thrown into the back of the van that night were drunk, but none was in public: each was in his own home. And yet not one of them questioned the legality of his arrest. After nearly a dace of democracy, each assumed that the cops had every right to drag him out of his home and throw him in prison.”

“Imprisonment is the form of punishment which may detrimentally affect not only the offender but also his family and his employment and because of its duration it can seldom be kept from becoming general public knowledge. It [...] can have a lasting demoralising effect on the character and personality of the offender. The loss of liberty, tedium, regimentation [...] which prison life entails, have a greater potentiality than a whipping for destroying the offender's self-esteem and the integrity of his character and for changing, for the worse, his way of life.”

“The views of the Courts in regard to imprisonment have however undergone modification in the last ten years. Imprisonment is seen more and more as a harsh and drastic punishment to be reserved for callous and impenitent characters. We wish to adopt a more enlightened approach in which the probable effect of incarceration upon the life of the accused person and those near to her is carefully weighed.”

“The difference between the past and the present is that individual freedom and security no longer fall to be protected solely through the D vehicle of common-law maxims and presumptions which may be altered or repealed by statute, but are now protected by entrenched constitutional provisions which neither the Legislature nor the Executive may abridge. It would accordingly be improper for us to hold constitutional a system which, as Sachs J has noted, confers on creditors the power to consign the person of an impecunious debtor to prison at will and without the interposition at the crucial time of a judicial officer.”

“My conclusions, on this point, are as follows: when the Law Commission says committal of judgment debtors is an anomaly that cannot be justified and should be abolished; when it is common cause that there is a general international move away from imprisonment for civil debt, of which the present committal proceedings are an adapted relic; when such imprisonment has been abolished in South Africa, save for its contested form as contempt of court in the magistrate's court; when the clauses concerned have already been interpreted by the Courts as restrictively as possible, without their constitutionally offensive core being eviscerated; when other tried and tested methods exist for recovery of debt from those in a position to pay; when the violation of the fundamental right to personal freedom is manifest, and the procedures used must inevitably possess a summary character if they are to be economically worthwhile to the creditor, then the very institution of civil imprisonment, however it may be described and however well directed its procedures might be, in itself must be regarded as highly questionable and not a compelling claimant for survival.”

“That is the Mozambique border over there, just beyond the second kopje, only seven or eight miles from here.' 'Mozambique, ' Claudia murmured, peering through her binoculars. 'The name has such a romantic ring to it.' 'Not so romantic. It's just another triumph of African socialism abd the carefully thought-out economic policy of chaos and ruination; Sean grunted. 'I cant take racism before breakfast; Claudia told him icily. 'All right; Sean grinned. 'Suffice it to say that just across the border there you have twelve years of Marxism, corruption, greed and incompetence, just beginning to bear fruit. You have a civil war raging out of control, famine that will probably starve a million people, and epidemic disease, including Aids, that will kill another million in the next five years.”

“Before we commence this guided tour of Mozambiquan paradise of the proletariat, this shining gem of African socialism, will you bear with me while I give you a few facts and figures. Nobody protested, so he went on. Until 1975 Mozambique was a Portuguese colony. For almost five hundred years it had been under Portuguese control and had been a reasonably happy and prosperous community of some fifteen million souls. The Portugese unlike the British or German colonists had a relaxed attitude towards miscegenation and the result was a large mulatto population, and an official policy of 'Assimilado' under which any person of colour , if he attained certain civilised standards, was considered to be white and enjoyed Portugese nationality. It all worked very well, as indeed did most colonial administrations, especially those of the British.' 'Bullshit,' said Claudia demurely. 'That's limey propaganda. 'Limey?" Sean smiled thinly. 'Carefull, your prejudice is showing, nonetheless your average Indian or African living today in a former British colony is a damned sight worse off now than he was then. Certainly that goes one hundred times more for your average black man living in Mozambique.' 'At least they are free,' Claudia cut in, and Sean laughed. 'This is freedom? an economy managed under the well-known socialist principles of chaos and ruination which has resulted in a negative growth rate of up to ten per cent per annum every year since the Portuguese withdrawal, a foreign debt amounting to double the gross national product, a total breakdown in the education system, and only five per cent of children regularly attending a recognised school, one doctor per forty five thousand persons, only one person in ten with access to purified drinking water, infant mortality at 340 per 1000 births. The only worse countries in the world are Afghanistan and Angola, but as you say, at least they are free. In America, where everyone eats three huge meals a day, freedom may be a big deal, but in Africa a full belly counts a hell of alot more'. 'It can't be as bad as that,' she protested. 'No,' he agreed. It's a lot worse. I haven't mentioned two other factors, the civil war and aids. When the Portugese were pushed out, they handed over to a dictator named Samaro Machel and his Frelimo party. Machel was an avowed Marxist. He didn't believe in the nonsense of elections, and his rule was directly responsible for the present condition of the country, and for the emergence of the National Mozambiquan resistance or as it is known to its freinds and admirers, Renamo. Nobody knows much about it, what its objectives are, who its leaders are, all we know it that it controls most of the country, especially the north, and that it made up of a pretty ruthless bunch of characters.' 'Renamo is a South African front organisation, directed, supplied and controlled from Pretoria,' Claudia helped him out. 'Committed to the overthrow of sovereign government and the destabilisation of the southern continent.' 'Well done, ducky, ' Sean nodded approval. 'You've been studying the wisdom and erudition of the Organisation of African Unity and the non-aligned nations. You have even mastered their jargon. If only South Africa had the military and technological capacity to commit half the skulduggery it is accused of, it would not be simply the most powerful country in Africa.”

“A flock without lambs is doomed. A herd without calves has no future. A people whose children are doomed to ignorance has no future. It is our children who are, by this Act, condemned to a world of darkness and ignorance, who will never fit in anywhere in the world after being shut away from the rest of humanity by Bantu Education. If we all realise that, we cannot, no matter what the odds, stand idly by and let that happen. Where are the mothers in this hall who will say: 'Never! Not to my child!'? Where are the women of this nation who will say: 'Never, not to our children!'? Have we less courage than the mother-hen, that will dare the falcon that swoops down on her young? I do not think so. Let us take a lesson from those mothers in Hitler's concentration camps, who, in a desperate situation, tried to save their children. We will do the same too. We will tell Verwoerd that over our dead bodies will he condemn our children to ignorance. We will tell him: Never, not to our children.”

“With the first rays of dawn coming from a huge orange sun, rising out of the Indian Ocean from the East, the Dominion Monarch passed the Durban bluffs and entered the protected harbor. A police boat escorted the ship in and stood by as it was secured. Everybody crowded close to the railings and looked down onto the concrete dock. From the ship you could see that there were police cars blocking the entry to the wharf area and it became quite apparent that something was amiss. The reason was soon made clear when the loudspeakers announced that before clearing the ship, everyone on board would be required to get a smallpox vaccination or present their international immunization card, to verify that they were in compliance. There had been an outbreak of smallpox and yellow fever throughout Africa especially in the Cape Province and in tribal areas. During the previous year, nearby Northern Rhodesia had reported several thousand cases of these diseases. The police boat lay in wait, until every last one of the passengers was immunized. It took hours, however everyone was happy when the health officials finally came aboard to do the vaccinating. Finally the announcement came that the ship was cleared so that we could go ashore. Not until then did the band strike up and play “God Save the King.”

“In South Africa, "some women identify as gay rather than lesbian" and a "masculine man" playing the dominant role in a relationship with another man, for instance, is called "a straight man" and is not perceived as "gay" because he act as penetrator during sexual intercourse. This holds true to some extent in North Africa and in the Middle East.”

“I keep forgetting you are one of them, which is silly of me. You dont attempt to conceal your bigotry. The simple fact is that your government and apartheid are the scourge and the curse for Africa.'' Of course, we are responsible for everything: the aids epidemic, the famines of Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique, the breakdown of government in Uganda and Zambia. The corruption in Nigeria and Zaire, it's all a dirty South African plot. We even killed Samaro Machel, we fed vodka to the Russian crew of his Tupolev jet and with our incredibly sophisticated technology, lured them over the border. Machel hit one of our racist mountains with such force that his brains and major organs were instantly expelled from his body; nevertheless, our apartheid doctors kept him alive long enough to torture state secrets out of him. That is the truth determined by the UNO and AOU'.”

“To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.”

“It’s a shame that you have to lie and say someone is selling alcohol or there is a party going on to get police attention in South Africa. If you call and tell them about crime being committed, Gender Based Violence or drugs being sold. They don’t respond or show up. It’s like criminals join police force to commit their crime officially and using states resources. Our police only want to arrests people who are innocent and they let go of criminals.”

“In South Africa, we have more political parties than we have in our social crisis. Yet none of our problems are being resolved. It is because none of these people are leadership material. Different views to them mean enemies & Different opinion means betrayal. One disagreement they go and open their own party. They only want positions they don’t want to serve people. They can’t resolve conflicts, without hating, holding grudges, and pointing fingers. Its leaders without vision, goals, and policies. They just follow rumors, and their own agenda, pushing propaganda and conspiracy theories. They cause division and separation within the party, and they don’t believe in unity, because they don’t want to share power.”

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

“It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.”

“The last time everyone loved or at least liked everyone was when the world had a population of about 4.”

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

“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.”

“Some people are each holding on to a lover of theirs who no longer loves them and/or who they no longer love, only because they do not want to have a reason or another reason to be jealous of the person who would eventually be their lover if they let go of them.”

“I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.”