To have the ability to destroy all and not to do it was one of the hard tests humanity passed – but only just – in the middle of the twentieth century. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
In East, South and Central Africa, the minority manipulated the majority into believing the minority was the majority, that there were more whites in the world than blacks; instilled in the blacks a sense of inferiority, inadequacy, worthlessness. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
Must simplicity and humanity go under in the interest of progress? What is the most important component of civilization – is it human or mechanical? Must thought processes become involved and insincere? Must the class-struggle warp those who are involved in it? Peter Abrahams Read Quote
Marxism, communism, socialism – the ideologies – did not have the automatic answers to the problem of the relations between the lighter and darker races of mankind. They did not even have an answer to anti-Semitism. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
The racism of the Nazis threatened to make whatever we had experienced look like child’s play. If they could be so brutal to the Jews, what would they do to the blacks? So large numbers of black young men and women rallied to the defence of the empire. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
Most of the black women who lived in the lower end of Vrededorp came from the countryside and were there to be near their menfolk who worked in the mines. They spoke neither English nor Afrikaans. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
A man can submit today in order to resist tomorrow. My submission had been such. And because I had not been free to show my real feeling, to voice my true thoughts, my submission had bred bitterness and anger. And there were nearly ten million others who had submitted with equal anger and bitterness. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
