Kopano Ratele

“The thing is that some feelings between a parent and a child may have nothing to do to do with rational thinking. Let me say this again. Some things between a parent and a child, a father and a child might have nothing to do with rational thinking with the conscious mind moving.”

“Indeed, for me, decolonisation means deep change. There are groups of people in all departments saying, 'we can do better, we can change and lead South Africa, perhaps even the world, in how universities should be'.”

“Even before children go to school, they learn prejudice from how their parents talk to other people; they learn it from neighbours, from media and from books. If you change how people think about what they learn about whiteness, about white identity, you'll change the identity of the institution so that it's no longer seen as an exclusionary white university, but as a place for all people who want to come and learn here.”

“The habit in our schools is nothing if it's not initiation: twelve years of initiation, sixteen years in some cases. When you start with play school and then you still have to go to diversity education. It is about initiating people in particular ways of thinking, so initiation is about that, about initiating men in particular kinds of masculinity, so this is always necessary, but death is not necessary. Why in South Africa do we have do we always seem to have a connection between violence and masculinity?”