Binyavanga Wainaina Quotes

The possibility of a liberal capitalist democracy in South Africa is exactly nil. The racialist propaganda amongst the whites and their desire to maintain what they imagine to be a profitable situation makes it utterly unthinkable that there can be a political alignment that favours a liberal white group. In any case the political immorality, cowardice and vacillation of the so—called progressives amongst the whites render them utterly useless as a force against fascism.

I have always thought that the rapid economic development of South Africa would in the long run prove to be incompatible with the government's racial policies, and recent events have tended to confirm my opinion.

Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked.

Apartheid is alive and well and it lives in our schools, and I'm sad to say it lives in the halls of the State legislature.

Whoever says that sanctions will only deteriorate the situations of blacks in South Africa does not know the criminal, murderous character of genocide that represents the system of apartheid.

While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.

There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.

Racial discrimination, South Africa's economic power, its oppression and exploitation of all the black peoples, are part and parcel of the same thing.

I think all of my writing life led up to the writing of 'The Train Driver' because it deals with my own inherited blindness and guilt and all of what being a white South African in South Africa during those apartheid years meant.

Apartheid does not happen spontaneously, like bad weather conditions.

South Africa is labouring to find its revolutionary path; the colours of the Rainbow Nation have difficulty blending together; the wealthy elites (white, black or Indian) profit from de facto segregation.

Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.

The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival.

Who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door? What have been the fruits of moderation? The past thirty years have seen the greatest number of laws restricting our rights and progress, until today we have reached a stage where we have almost no rights at all.

When I consider the political future of the Natives in South Africa I must say that I look into shadows and darkness, and then I feel inclined to shift the intolerable burden of solving that sphinx problem to the ampler shoulders and the stronger brains of the future.

Apartheid - both petty and grand - is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority.

I think we've become blind in this country to the ways in which we've managed to reinvent a caste-like system here in the United States, one that functions in a manner that is as oppressive, in many respects, as the one that existed in South Africa under apartheid and that existed under Jim Crow here in the United States.

We should have sent the apartheid monsters to jail, not let them off with an amnesty.

I think that many of the issues they were facing in South Africa were the same as those I was singing about. Conscription, resisting the draft, government repression - I mentioned all those things in my songs.

Chicago is highly segregated, a fact that both causes and compounds the problems we face in bringing an end to violence.

Those who want to perpetuate apartheid also seek to divert your attention to the false issue of communism, to send the entire American public on a witch hunt.

In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.

White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers.

The violence associated with the A.N.C. is minimal, infinitesimal next to the violence of the apartheid regime.

I think the most difficult thing that has had to happen in South Africa for the previously disadvantaged communities is they had to reconcile that the oppressor has been enriched and the establishment is now making five or 10 times more profit than they were during the time the economic embargo was on them.