You must regard this deviation from your plan as part of the adventure that you sought when you decided to embark on it in the first place…Absence of certainty is its essence. People…who choose to...

Moral writing is boring.

Religion and nationalism? I defecate on the altar of religious conviction, and wipe my arse on the flag of national pride.

I’ve devoted my life to see equality for blacks, and at the same time, I’ve denied the needs of my family. Please understand that I take these actions, not out of selfishness or arrogance, but...

I don’t think that, when future generations look at the apartheid struggle, they will see it as quite the momentous literary cauldron that recent history has suggested. In fact, as well as recording the struggle...

Stuff and nonsense: you must regard this deviationfrom your plan as part of the adventure that you soughtwhen you decided embark on it in the first place. Trueadventure does not follow well-trodden paths. Absenceof certainty...

If the good is not dependent on the bad and can be separated from it, one gives effect to the good that remains after the separation if it still gives effect to the main objective.

He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa.

And there’s one other matter I must raise. The epidemic of domestic sexual violence that lacerates the soul of South Africa is mirrored in the pattern of grotesque raping in areas of outright conflict from...

We will not be party to any Caesarian operation by South Africa. We are not going to have short-cuts…and force issues on Zimbabweans.

Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he...

Imprisonment is the form of punishment which may detrimentally affect not only the offender but also his family and his employment and because of its duration it can seldom be kept from becoming general public...

A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must...

Visit Cape Town and history is never far from your grasp. It lingers in the air, a scent on the breezy, an explanation of circumstance that shaped the Rainbow People. Stroll around the old downtown...

The bad parts of the statute are not judicially severable, I consider, from the rest of its provisions that deal with imprisonment. Their roots are entangled too tenaciously in the surrounding soil for a clean...

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that’s the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers,...

The difference between the past and the present is that individual freedom and security no longer fall to be protected solely through the D vehicle of common-law maxims and presumptions which may be altered or...

Deprived of human intercourse, I inevitably overvalue the imagination and expect it to make the mundane glow with an aura of self-transcendence.

The views of the Courts in regard to imprisonment have however undergone modification in the last ten years. Imprisonment is seen more and more as a harsh and drastic punishment to be reserved for callous...

There are not so many murders in this township, I think to myself, and not so few policemen, that a killing should be treated like an old woman who has lost her cat.

Have you a room that you could let?””Yes, I have a room that I could let, but I do not want to let it. I have only two rooms, and there are six of us...

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

We learn from history that we don’t learn from history!

About a year ago, an entire suburb in this man’s jurisdiction turned from the police and erected a substitute agency. To all intents and purposes, several thousand people here have severed their relationship with the...

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel magazine, Departures. Together, we evolved a harmless satire...

It was not lack of ability that limited my people, but lack of opportunity.

I never was really concerned about that. The soil is the same here as it is back in South Africa or Australia.

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.

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

Never argue with a fool, people might not notice the difference

Steve and I have discussed a formula so that the ‘A’ team will adapt the same shape of game as the Scotland side so, if someone is required to fly from Canada to South Africa,...

My conclusions, on this point, are as follows: when the Law Commission says committal of judgment debtors is an anomaly that cannot be justified and should be abolished; when it is common cause that there...

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

The business of reading and interpreting the Bible in South Afria is a tricky one! The Bible is everywhere and in the hands of many, including the pain inflictors. ~ Mogomme Alpheus Masoga

Young girls frequently report that their early sexual experiences were coerced. In a study in South Africa, 30 percent of girls report that their first sexual intercourse was forced. In rural Malawi, 55 percent of...

This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, ‘When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.’ But the serious critique of Zuma is...

Severability is an important concept in the context of the relations between this Court and Parliament; like ‘reading down’, it is an instrument of judicial restraint which reduces the danger of producing an overbroad judicial...

You can’t change a regime on the basis of compassion. There’s got to be something harder.

What is this so-called ’employment flexibility’? It simply means that employers, in their quest to reduce costs whilst trying to meet the demands of globalisation, are disregarding the traditional job boundaries – often to the...

Chomie’ is South African homosexual men’s unofficial name.

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.In South...

Live your dreams, not your fears! A.Hume

I’m happy to be a card-carrying member of the ANC.

Mandela alikuwa hodari ndiyo maana akapelekwa jela. Alikuwa mvumilivu ndiyo maana akakaa jela kwa miaka ishirini na saba. Alivyotoka akawa kiongozi bora wa Afrika Kusini. Utu ukafanya awasamehe binadamu wenzake. Urithi wa Nelson Mandela kwetu...

Nelson Mandela so much believed in education-because he knew it lead us (social free)to political views different from the ones he implemented.

There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called ‘state security’ in a throwback to both apartheid...

We all know that a call-up to the Springboks (South Africa national team) is a major achievement and the rewards, especially financial, are huge.

I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country.

Good evening South Africa, it is really evening now that the shadows are chasing the sun down the west with a great darkness trailing behind them. I am scared for myself and for you because...

To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into...