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Quotes About Apartheid

The new policy was tantamount to apartheid, to be sure. But if it was predicated on the prevailing racism of the time, it was also fueled by an emerging humanitarian concern that whole tribes were truly on the brink of expiration—becoming, in Carleton's alarming phrase, Children of the Mist.
~ Hampton Sides
It must not be forgotten in fairness to the National Government that apartheid is not just a policy of oppression but an attempt - in my opinion an attempt doomed to failure - to find an alternative to a policy of racial integration which is fair to both white and black.
~ Harry Oppenheimer
In South Africa, being Chinese meant I wasn't white and I wasn't black. I trained in Baragwanath Hospital, the largest black hospital in South Africa. That was around 1976, the time of the Soweto Uprising, when police fired on children and students who were protesting. I was part of the group of interns who volunteered to treat them.
~ Patrick Soon-Shiong
Poverty and the rule of race that is called apartheid drive the Transkeian migrant from security on the land to work in the cities, and then back again.
~ Ruth First
There are something like 300 anti-genocide chapters on college campuses around the country. It's bigger than the anti-apartheid movement. There are something like 500 high school chapters devoted to stopping the genocide in Darfur. Evangelicals have joined it. Jewish groups have joined it.
~ Samantha Power
You found during apartheid a strange occurrence from the white folks themselves. There were those who did make a choice to speak out and stand and be counted in the army of human beings who believed in justice. And then there are those who left.
~ John Kani
Apartheid has fallen, see, we die right next to each other now, in intimate proximity. It's just the living part we still have to work out.
~ Damon Galgut
In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.
~ Desmond Tutu
My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't really have a function as a useful artist in that anymore.
~ Athol Fugard
I didn't actually realise what apartheid meant. I'm probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses.
~ John Deacon
Being gay immediately placed me outside the values of the society I was growing up in. Apartheid was a very patriarchal system, so its assumptions seemed foreign to me from the outset. I've always had the advantage of alienation.
~ Damon Galgut
I was involved with the anti-apartheid movement through my work as an artist and also through my political commitment.
~ Danny Glover
I want to see Nelson walking down the streets of South Africa; I want to see him walking hand-in-hand with Winnie Mandela.
~ Hugh Masekela
We believe that the world, too, can destroy apartheid, firstly by striking at the economy of South Africa.
~ Oliver Tambo
Words will not speak and the silence freezes into the images of the apartheid
~ Unknown
How do you deal with a criminal that will not listen to what you have to say and who continues his policy of violence? Some say you continue to talk and let him tire himself out. But nearly 40 years after the institution of apartheid, is there anyone who still believes that verbal persuasion will work?
~ Oliver Tambo
To go back to Brown, a concern the United States government had was definitely part of the picture. At that time, we were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the State Department filed a brief in Brown v. Board urging the Court to end what was basically apartheid in America. It said, we are being embarrassed constantly by the Soviet Union charging that the United States is a racist society. Please, Court, help us to end that era.
~ Jeffrey Rosen
Mbeki began to write a study of the workings of apartheid policy in the reserves - the areas set aside in law for African occupation - as early as 1959 and 1960.
~ Ruth First
When I was a kid, pre-1994 was still apartheid, so we didn't get a lot the subversive music from the States or from the U.K. A lot of the music we would get was the poppiest pop music, so I've never really had a bad association it.
~ St. Lucia
By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.
~ Noam Chomsky
The U.S. is the last country that should see itself as an ally of the apartheid system.
~ Oliver Tambo
This was the winter of 2008/9. Work was ongoing to reinstate a tram system in the city. A lot of people couldn't see the point of trams and many more disliked the disruption. Streets were closed off. There was almost a sense of 'apartheid' as the roadworks made it difficult to move from New Town to Old Town and vice versa. Added to which, the weather was fairly grim. And the banks looked ready to implode.
~ Ian Rankin
In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.
~ Noam Chomsky
Nelson Mandela, Dada Vaswani, Harsh Mander, Shabana Azmi - I admire their humanitarian work. But sadly even Nelson Mandela could not keep corruption out of his cabinet and within a year, I am told, the victims of apartheid turned into perpetrators of corruption on their own people. Greed has no boundaries of colour or country does it?
~ Amala Akkineni