Peter Abrahams Quotes

Light is white: dark is black.

In the name of civilization, the dignity and worth of the African people has been grossly underrated, their progress retarded and aspirations frustrated, and the whole life undermined. They are compelled to live in appalling conditions of squalor, filth and isolation...

Leah left him and he collapsed in a heap. She looked down and spat. The she raised her heel and brought it down on his face.

It was difficult for the Africans most of whom had taken European education and embraced Christian religion, to revert to the rapidly dying, outdated traditions and customs of their forefathers

In that time I had been accused of theft, I had been called all the pet names of abuse reserved by whites for blacks; I had carried heavy loads to the tram stop, and women had conveniently forgotten to pay.

On a different mental and emotional level my friend Jonathan had gone through the same process. Christianity and the knowledge it brought had made the tribal past inadequate. So he had turned to the Christian present and future. These working men had found the tribal economy inadequate when the new taxes, the new offerings, and new prices of the white men came. So they had turned to city...

If a woman loves a man she does that which is good for him.

No! I don't want you to touch me.

Found that the good things of this present are RESERVED FOR EUROPEANS ONLY

Dressed in an orange sack. Three holes in the sack allowed for his head and arms to come through. About his waist was a piece of rope that gathered the sack in and made it hang like some monkish garb. He was barefooted.

Who had given him the scholarship? The Bantu Welfare Trust? No one I asked seemed sure. I put out feelers. The Welfare Trust was only for pure-blooded Africans. And though the Africans might accept me as one of themselves, the whites who administered the trust would not. Those to whom I spoke thought it crazy, but there you are.

His white man had even tried to make friends with him because the other mine boys respected him so much. But a white man and a black man cannot be friends. They work together. That's all.

So many people who consider themselves progressives have their own weird notions about the native, but they all have one thing in common. They want to decide who the good native is and they want to do good things for him. [...] They want to think for him and he must accept their thoughts. And they like him to depend on them.

He sat on the bed and held his head in his hands. Eliza had gone out with that sickly monkey dressed in the clothes of a white man. Why, even his hands were soft.

He (Roderiques) was hungry and homeless. So I fed him. He told me something had gone wrong and he had to leave the Roman school. He said he had no people.