Esther Mahlangu Quotes

African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.

The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.

I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.

I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed with a strength much greater than my size, so I might cope with the weight of racism that crushes my spirit.

I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin's prose. It liberated me as a writer. These poems overwhelm without competing with his prose, and I am grateful to have this collection.

I underlined my conviction that running a business and managing an enterprise were not merely a private concern but a public endeavor.

Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use.

In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land.

After all, advocates, including advocates for States, are like managers of pugilistic and election contestants, in that they have a propensity for claiming everything.

Until I discovered the miracle that all things that sound are music, including dishes and silverware in the dishwasher, as long as they fulfill the illusion of showing us where life is heading.

But African languages refused to die. They would not simply go to the way of Latin to become the fossils for linguistic archaeology to dig up, classify, and argue about the international conferences.

The European view point of exploitation of women in Europe compared to the African American women shows an inaccurate judgment.

I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

Looking at the new generation of African artists, many of them get trapped early on in styles that aren’t theirs, and that limits them. At this rate, I worry about the future of African music, and that in the future, there won’t be many singers who represent the African woman.

I underlined my conviction that running a business and managing an enterprise were not merely a private concern but a public endeavor.

One of the things that is his inability to contact him. He's never had a 'phone.   And before the days when mobile 'phones were popular you had to 'phone his mam.....