Peter Abrahams Quotes

Dear God! Has earth a fairer land? Can there be one as fair? And if there can, can I feel for it as for this? And can my heart ever ache for the people of another with the purity it does for the people of this? The whites here sing a love song to the land, from within. Would they have me sing it from without? A little self-conscious and ashamed at the intensity of my emotions. New feelings, elusive and uncontrollable, played on my heart and mind. A need different from all the other needs I had ever known moved me to longing. And I did not know what I longed for.

All the years of his life had been spent walking through the land; from east to west, then back; from north to south, then back.

Hoopvlei was another of the white man's ventures to get the natives and coloreds out of the towns. The natives did not like the locations, and besides, they were all full, so the white man had started townships in the outlying district of Johannesburg in the hope of killing Vrededorp and Malay Camp. Many other places had been killed thus.

An unbelievable thing happened. The second colored man knocked the first one down and ran down the street waving to Xuma.

I am no good and I cannot help myself. It will be right if you hate me. You should beat me. But inside me there is something wrong. And it is because I want the things of the white people. I want to be like the white people and go where they go and do the things they do and I am black. I cannot help it.

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Africans most of whom had taken European education and embraced Christian religion, to revert to the rapidly dying, outdated traditions and customs of their forefathers

That was the heart of it there, where it was almost as light as day. I could see cars and trams clearly. And the outlines of people moving. White people. To the left, and a little towards me, was Malay Camp, an inky black spot in the sea of light. Couldn't see anything there. Dark folk move in darkness: white folk move in light. Well, Malay Camp wouldn’t be a slum if it were as light as the city. Slum is darkness. Dark folk live in darkness.

The natives did not like locations, and besides, they were all full, so the white man had started townships in the outlying district of Johannesburg in the hope of killing Vrededorp and Malay Camp.

You write in English and already you are touching things that should not be mentioned.

The only place where he was completely free was underground in the mines. There he was a master and knew his way. There he did not even fear his white man, for his white man depended on him. He was the boss boy. He gave the orders to the other mine boys. They would do for him what they would not do for his white man or any other white man.

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.

I pushed my nose and lip...I was inside the raindrop away from the misery of the cold damp room. I was in a place of warmth and sunshine, inside my raindrop world.

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.

Entering is stepping into a new Dark Age. The sea had once been here. In its retreat it had left a white, unyielding sand, grown dirty with time. It had left almost a desert.

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...