South African Reconciliation - Quotes
Antje Krog |
"What I want to know is why is he being so ridiculed and spurned? Are we saying that we don't want the guilty to change?" Author Antje Krog on the reaction to former apartheid police minister Adriaan Vlok's decision to was the feet of his victims. |
Desmond Tutu |
"We are regarded with awe and admiration for showing the world that it is possible for those who had been involved in bloody conflict to evolve into comrades; to undergo the metamorphosis of the repulsive caterpillar into the gorgeous butterfly by opting for the path of forgiveness and reconciliation instead of retaliation, retribution and revenge. Let us become what we are, the rainbow people of the God, proud of our diversity, celebrating our differences that make not for separation and alienation but for a gloriously rich unity." |
Yolandi Groenewald and Tumi Makgetla |
"Vlok washed the feet of the mothers and widows of the 'Mamelodi 10' shortly after meeting presidential aide Frank Chikane to perform the same act of contrition. He washed their feet a day before Chikane spoke to the media...At a second meeting with the Mamelodi women, Vlok was inspired to wash their
feet. Initially, some of the women had hesitated, but Catherine Magabula, who
had lost her son, Jeremiah, immediately removed her socks." Yolandi Groenewald and Tumi Makgetla writing in the Mail & Guardian |
Adriaan Vlok |
"I am going to wash your feet...I have to show humility for what had happened in the past. I came to you because I take you as a representative and an embodiment of all the other people I should be talking to and I thought I must come to you, express it to you because [through you] I shall have done so to everybody else." Adriaan Vlok to the Rev. Frank Chikane |
Robert Subokwe |
"Freedom of the Africans can only be established when the African group comes into its own. Freedom of the Africans means freedom for everyone, including Europeans in this country." |
Walter Sisulu |
"The fundamental principle in our struggle is equal rights for all in our country, and that all people who have made South Africa their home, by birth or adoption, irrespective of colour or creed, are entitled to these rights." |
Albert Luthuli |
"The main thing is that the Government and the people should be democratic to the core. It is relatively unimportant who is in the Government. I am not opposed to the present Government because it is white; I am opposed to it only because it is undemocratic and repressive. My idea is a non-racial government chosen on the basis of merit rather than colour. Appeals to racialism at elections should be a legal offence." |
References
10 September 2006 |
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8 September 2006 |
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