Quotes About Injustice

Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can't do anything about that.

In America we talk about South Africa, but I tell people that apartheid is nothing compared to what is happening in my country where black oppresses black.

Do you think that the people of South Africa, or anywhere on the continent of Africa, or India, or Pakistan are longing to be kicked around all over again?

In May 1961, South Africa was to be declared a Nationalist Republic. There was a white referendum, but no African was consulted.

If we'd lived in England or America we'd have told stories abut our lives and nobody would have called it protest theatre. But the reality of South Africa was the arrests and detentions and oppression - we could not escape that, so we decided to take it on.

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.

South Africa was to evolve into the most pernicious example of the criminal practise of colonial and white minority domination.

When I left South Africa in 1960 I was 20 years old. I wanted to try to get an education, and music education was not available for me in South Africa.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

When I went to live in South Africa, I immediately began to understand what went wrong. Because here was a place supposed to be under apartheid - I arrived there in 1991 - but here a black person had more say and had more influence over his white government than an average Kenyan had over the Moi government.

It is wrong to divide the nation white against black, native born against immigrant or one religion against another. It is also wrong to divide people by income. East Germany was not an improvement over South Africa. Obama divides Americans against each other. This is wrong.

When I was in South Africa, I went for dinner with some friends, and I knew more about their history than they did - it just hasn't been told.

I try not to get too political. But coming from South Africa, where apartheid was a huge problem, and there was lots of inequality, has shaped me in terms of how I view certain issues.

We haven't got those dreams: 'I wish to become doctor or a lawyer.' Black people in South Africa have been barred in doing anything that would articulate their cause.

One of the main points everywhere in my life is fairness. Coming from South Africa and being treated unfairly all your life because of your skin colour, that's been a huge point.

A 'township' in the U.S. is a small area. In South Africa it's a place designated for non-white people during the apartheid.

I'd been to South Africa during the Seventies, when it was definitely not kosher to go there. I felt that the best thing to do was to be a missionary and tell people what was going on in their own country because censorship was so dreadful.

South Carolina is one of the most racist states in America. John C. Calhoun is the name of a building at our school and he was a slave owner. Clemson, the name Clemson itself, was like a guy who was a slave owner. South Carolina, their whole history is messed up.

When I was in South Korea, the books that I read about Americans were actually Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama. If this country actually oppresses people and enslaves the people, how are those two women billionaires?

In 1978, 'Time' magazine sent me to do a story about children in Southeast Asia fathered by American GIs. What I saw was very upsetting, but the story they published was whitewashed.

If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.

For generations, even many otherwise decent white Southerners learned to despise black people.

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

The whole ability to look at the complexity of race and any sort of associated -ism and still find humor, that's a very interesting space.