Important Quotations Explained
1. The
white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief—and again I
ask your pardon—that it cannot be mended again. But the house that
is broken, and the man that falls apart when the house is broken,
these are the tragic things. That is why children break the law,
and old white people are robbed and beaten.
2. I
see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and
black men . . . desiring only the good of their country, come together
to work for it. . . . I have one great fear in my heart, that one
day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned
to hating.
3. This
is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any
country. . . . Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom
that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the
woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things
are not yet at an end.
4. The
truth is that our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound
of great ideal and fearful practice, of high assurance and desperate
anxiety, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.
Allow me a minute. . . .
5. And
now for all the people of Africa, the beloved country.
Nkosi
Sikelel' iAfrika, God save Africa. But he would not see
that salvation. It lay afar off, because men were afraid of it.
Because, to tell the truth, they were afraid of him, and his wife,
and Msimangu, and the young demonstrator. And what was there evil
in their desires, in their hunger? That man should walk upright
in the land where they were born, and be free to use the fruits
of the earth, what was there evil in it? . . . They were afraid
because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but
by love.
