Quotes About South Africa

#1. In this era of the global village, the tide of democracy is running. And it will not cease, not in China, not in South Africa, not in any corner of this earth, where the simple idea of democracy and freedom has taken root.

Paul Tsongas

#2. The government that came into power after the April 1994 elections was going to need a budget. It was drafted by our finance minister, Derek Keys, and he convinced them of the necessity to stay within the free-market principles that had been in force in South Africa for decades.

F. W. De Klerk

#3. The only difference between [America] and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don't practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing.

Malcolm X

#4. S'tjwetla is a black man's striptease.

Toba Beta

#5. Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in the world; Islam is the second. It's spreading in Asia, Africa, and South America. So the world is in a kind of religious revival, and the atheists are totally flummoxed. They thought they were winning, and now they see that they aren't.

Dinesh D'Souza

#6. I think I was just too young to even understand what was going on. When I was still living in South Africa, there was still so much racial tension.

St. Lucia

#7. South Africa is the most beautiful country I have been to. Canada is also hugely underrated.

Honor Blackman

#8. We emigrated to South Africa and later to Canada so I went to school in several places.

J. Philippe Rushton

#9. We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.

Nelson Mandela

#10. I went to do my first big movie when I was 17. I was in South Africa for three and half months, and I was by myself.

Robert Pattinson

#11. I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

Brian Eno

#12. Weak, tea-drinking, effeminate, ineffectual
masters of India, robbers of South Africa, bedevillers of all Europe.

Christina Stead

#13. Father's always saying that South Africa must be one of the best countries in the world for surviving a zombie apocalypse,' Megan says seriously. 'It's full of security estates and high fences.

Lily Herne

#14. Press Freedom will never be under threat in South Africa for as long as the ANC is the majority party

Nelson Mandela

#15. I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn't just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.

Wole Soyinka

#16. Most Americans think of hunger as a problem affecting only places like India, Africa or South America. But it is a tragic reality that our country has millions of children who are suffering from lack of food. We must all work together to save our country from this problem.

Beverly Johnson

#17. Steve Harmison was a big disappointment in South Africa, and I don't know the reason why, but he has to lift his game.

Jeff Thomson

#18. The idea of an Afrikaner people as a cultural entity and religious group with a special language will be retained in South Africa as long as civilisation stands.

P. W. Botha

#19. The ANC will rule South Africa until Jesus comes back.

Jacob Zuma

#20. I never think of playing for South Africa. It's the furthest thing from my mind.

Kevin Pietersen

#21. 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.

Tariq Ramadan

#22. There's great wine from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and, of course, California. But there's nothing like a really great French wine, they're so well balanced. The better the wine, the less you feel the effects I think.

Ridley Scott

#23. As South Africa has a white population of only 2.8 million or thereabouts, you can see that every other central organization in the world has been out-created.

L. Ron Hubbard

#24. While many applauded Oprah for opening her heart to young girls in South Africa, some criticized her for not investing in the youth of America.

Kitty Kelley

#25. The virus is moving quite substantially into new locations. My attention is pretty much equally divided between Europe, the southern Balkans and Black Sea area, Africa and south Asia.

David Nabarro

#26. South Africa is blessed to have women and men like yourselves who have little to give but give what you have with open hands and open hearts.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi

#27. Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, South Africa - wherever there is a bleeding sore on the body of the world, the same hard-eyed narrow-minded fanatics are busy, indifferent to life, in love with death.

J.M. Coetzee

#28. It is very difficult now in South Africa to find anyone who ever supported apartheid.

Desmond Tutu

#29. it was the largest such action to ever take place in South Africa; over 1,500,000 million workers took part

Anonymous

#30. The European Tour plays all over the world: from the U.K. to China, from Korea to South Africa, and from the Middle East to southeast Asia.

Peter Uihlein

#31. I think South Africa has shown it can host such a big event as the World Cup, so why not hold the Olympics at some point in Africa? Maybe not just in one country but in a host of countries.

Jochen Zeitz

#32. South Africa is such a fraught place to live. The anxiety about crime, the crunching on racial eggshells, the juxtaposition of First World materialism with Third World squalor.

Rory Carroll

#33. It's very difficult not to come across as a white supremacist when there are so many black inferiorists around.

David Bullard

#34. Meerlust Rubicon from South Africa, a suitably wintry red.

John Connolly

#35. The reason I'm in San Diego is not because I want distance from South Africa but because I want proximity to the people I love. But I don't envy growing up in America. As ugly as aspects of it were, my biggest blessing was to be born a South African.

Athol Fugard

#36. Very sad to hear about the passing of Nelson Mandela. He was a true inspiration for human rights and equality for South Africa and the reason apartheid no longer exists there. The world will never forget his capacity for forgiveness and magnanimity. RIP

Bryan Adams

#37. I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.

Nelson Mandela

#38. There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty.

Nelson Mandela

#39. Don't let anyone tell you that Apartheid has nothing to do with South Africa now. Those roots run deep and tangled and we'll be tripping over them for many generations to come.

Lauren Beukes

#40. As regards to personal safety, you do have to be careful not to put yourself at risk when travelling in South Africa. You don't want to go out exploring at night, for example.

Wilbur Smith

#41. I have always had great respect for former president Mandela. The personal sacrifices he made in order to achieve what was right for the people of South Africa is something I carry with me every day.

Aaron Schock

#42. We view South Africa as one of our closest strategic partners in the developing world and in the African continent.

Pratibha Patil

#43. Live your dreams, not your fears! A.Hume

Albina Hume

#44. I think we have got the wood on South Africa, but that does not mean they are not a good team. They intimidate a lot of teams but we intimidate them. There is no disrespect for South Africa; they are a very good team.

Shane Warne

#45. As a young man in South Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gandhi developed satyagraha, a mode of political activism based upon moral persuasion, while mobilizing South Africa's small Indian minority against racial discrimination.

Pankaj Mishra

#46. I don't have to look far and wide to discover that material wealth alone is not enough to build a great nation. There are many countries in the world, especially in developing countries of Africa, Asia and South America that are enormously wealthy in natural resources and yet have a poor population.

Sunday Adelaja

#47. Rhodes, founder of the De Beers diamond company and at one time the virtual dictator of modern-day South Africa, famously declared, "We Britons are the first race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race." Among

Reza Aslan

#48. Africa is not just about where you are born. For me, Africa is the whole continent; from south to north, to east to west.

Angelique Kidjo

#49. I just came from South Africa, a place that had been in a perpetual uprising since 1653, so the uprising had become a way of life in our culture and we grew up with rallies and strikes and marches and boycotts.

Hugh Masekela

#50. The victory of democracy in South Africa is the common achievement of all humanity.

Nelson Mandela

#51. We cannot blame other people for our troubles. We are not victims of the influx of foreign people into South Africa. We must remember that it was mainly due to the aggressive and hostile policies of the apartheid regime that the economic development of our neighbours was undermined.

Nelson Mandela

#52. Leaving South Africa was very difficult.

Kevin Pietersen

#53. South African rugby doesn't have to stand back for anyone.

Rudolph Straeuli

#54. Businesses need certainty, to see clearly the rules of engagement for investing in South Africa.

Nicky Oppenheimer

#55. I'm happy to be a card-carrying member of the ANC.

Nadine Gordimer

#56. In the criminal law [ ... ] imprisonment should be resorted to only after the most anxious consideration.

Pius Langa

#57. 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.

Miriam Makeba

#58. Usually halfway through a book I have a serious depression, so I go on safari on my ranch in South Africa, or fishing off my island in the Seychelles. When I come back and re-read it, I think: 'What was all that about, Smith? It's fine, just get on with it.'

Wilbur Smith

#59. South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.

Thabo Mbeki

#60. A blind pursuit of cheap popularity has nothing to do with revolution.
[Political Report of the National Executive Committee to the forty-ninth A.N.C. National Conference, Bloemfontein, South Africa, 17 December 1994]

Nelson Mandela

#61. Christianity has roughly 20 percent of its followers in Africa, 20 percent in Asia, 20 percent in Europe, 20 percent in North America, and 20 percent in South America. Every other major religion has at least 80 percent of its followers concentrated on one continent.

J.D. Greear

#62. About the joys and the courage, I really don't know what other people think. I just know that I've never left Africa. I've lived there all my life. And one of the wonderful things, in spite of all the terrible things that happen in South Africa, is the way people continue to keep their dignity.

Nadine Gordimer

#63. I believe that here in South Africa, with all our diversities of colour and race; we will show the world a new pattern for democracy. There is a challenge for us to set a new example for all. Let us not side step this task.

Albert Lutuli

#64. Remember, we really grew up separately; our life experience was very different because of segregation. So I think comedy is a good space to work those things out and educate everyone about the different experiences and different race groups in South Africa.

Riaad Moosa

#65. My list would be Russia, Morocco, Turkey, and South Africa I'm doing which is somewhere I've wanted to go, Australia, Japan maybe, and China, if I have the energy to go and play at all those places.

A.R. Rahman

#66. There is a seeded bread that I bring from South Africa. I bring home 10, 20 loaves. I am so bad with this bread. I've literally been in hotels and brought my own: "Please, can you toast this? I have my own bread." They're like, "You have your own bread?" And I'll pull it out!

Oprah Winfrey

#67. If there was to be equal manhood suffrage the whites would be swamped all over South Africa by the blacks and the whole position for which whites have striven for 200 years or more would be given up.

Jan Smuts

#68. Working in South Africa and the people in Johannesburg get under your skin. It stays with you. It's a place I want to take my children back to. It's a place that filled me with great joy and inspiration but also sadness. I think it's one of the most complex places on the planet.

Ryan Phillippe

#69. In South Carolina, I had been an African. In Nova Scotia, I had become known as a Loyalist, or a Negro, or both. And now, finally back in Africa, I was seen as a Nova Scotian, and in some respects thought of myself that way too.

Lawrence Hill

#70. I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. From a response to an offer of conditional freedom, read by Zindzi Mandela at a rally, Jabulani Stadium, Soweto, South Africa,

Nelson Mandela

#71. I got stopped in front of the bras in Victoria's Secret; I get interrogated in airport bathrooms. I went to South Africa in January to see my family, and even there people would stop me and ask, "Sasha, who's A?" Even my grandma.

Sasha Pieterse

#72. Working with kids in Soweto in South Africa, it's rough out there. But the bottom line is you've got to go to know. In Cambodia, there are 10,000 landmines. Same in Afghanistan, same in Colombia. I'm totally addicted to traveling.

Quincy Jones

#73. Olive Schreiner is less a woman than a geographical fact. Just as one thinks of Egypt as a foreground for the Pyramids, so South Africa seems the setting of that warm, attractive, aggressive personality. Her work is far inferior to her.

Rebecca West

#74. 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.

Athol Fugard

#75. The biggest problem in South Africa is that we have a disrupted timeline. Historically, politically, spiritually, economically, in people's minds, in people's heads.

Abdullah Ibrahim

#76. If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

Nelson Mandela

#77. Traveling is a great love of mine. I love South America and Africa. I'm your ultimate backpacker when I'm away. It's just me and my backpack. It's good for getting away from the industry.

Matthew McConaughey

#78. It was very interesting growing up in South Africa then. It was extraordinary. It was multiculturalism before it became an issue.

Roselee Goldberg

#79. Former South Africa President Nelson Mandela announced Tuesday he will begin writing his autobiography. He spent 25 years in prison before being elected to public office. In America, we do it the other way around.

Argus Hamilton

#80. There is a word in South Africa - ubuntu - that describes his greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us,

Barack Obama

#81. South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world.

Desmond Tutu

#82. Nelson Mandela was an outstanding leader and a mentor for me. I was in South Africa at the time he was released. I was in South Africa when he was inaugurated as the first president.

Gail Kelly

#83. As Alan Paton said, 'Ah but your fucking land is beautiful'.

Andre Brink

#84. If you take a child from South Africa and you put them in Boston, they're going to speak with a Boston accent. And so, that's a way to see the world as everybody is equal, not as a result of politics, but as human beings.

Michel Gondry

#85. What in Mandela was seen as an almost saintly ability to conciliate could, in a lesser man, be read as weak-kneed populism.

Mark Gevisser

#86. No one can compare us to the apartheid regime. It's not like in South Africa between the blacks and the whites who belong to the same nation, or in Berlin where you find parents living on the eastern side and their children in the western side.

Silvan Shalom

#87. Apartheid was in South Africa; now it has been transferred to Palestine.

Yahya Jammeh

#88. Our economy is a hundred times better, than the average African economy. Outside South Africa, what country is [as good as] Zimbabwe? ... What is lacking now are goods on the shelves-that is all.

Robert Mugabe

#89. Personally, I believe in self-determination, but in the context of one South Africa - so that my self-determination is based in this region, and with my people.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi

#90. Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it's going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam.

Lauren Beukes

#91. Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.

Nadine Gordimer

#92. When I meet some of my commuting acquaintances on the 6.21 home to Henley-on-Thames they occasionally enquire what I have done that day. I have been known to reply: 'I moved Africa 600 kilometres to the south.' They usually turn quickly to the soccer page. One

Richard Fortey

#93. Race mixing becomes a crime worse than treason. Humans being humans, and sex being sex, that prohibition never stopped anyone. There were mixed kids in south Africa 9 months after the first Dutch boats hit the beach at Table Bay.

Trevor Noah

#94. I don't think we choked this time. We never played well enough to choke.

Craig Matthews

#95. Only mosquito can save Nigeria. Only mosquito can save South Africa. Only mosquito can save Zimbabwe Only mosquito can save Namibia. Only mosquito can save Africa. Only malaria can save Africa. Only yellow fever can save Africa.

Laurie Garrett

#96. I think the TAC was just a disgrace, a disgrace not only to the [health] department but a disgrace to the whole country. But I think, as South Africa, we really demonstrated that we are doing pretty well.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang

#97. Democratic self-government has manifestly brought benefits to India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, and scores of nations all making their way in the world.

Michael Gove

#98. There were times when I would suddenly realize making music is a crazy pipe dream. I would see bands that did super well in South Africa still struggling to survive, or even people on the international level who are doing well but financially can't really support themselves.

St. Lucia

#99. I cannot imagine being happy anywhere else in the world but in Cape Town - South Africa in general, but Cape Town in particular.

Christoffel Wiese

#100. Since the start of the Ashes I have had a hectic workload. I've played almost every game, but I'm thinking that after South Africa and the Bangladesh series I can clock off for two or three months. It's like Friday afternoon for a guy who goes to work all week.

Brett Lee