Njabulo Ndebele

“You see, you should learn to say what you mean. Words, little man, are a gift from the Almighty, the Eternal Wisdom. He gave us all a little pinch of his mind and called on us to think. That is why it is folly to misuse words or not to know how to use them well.””

“And that’s our problem. We laugh at everything, just stopping short of seriousness.”

“But I learnt one lesson out of all this. It is that we should have stuck to our science. You see, too much obsession with removing oppression in the political dimension, soon becomes itself a form of oppression. Especially if everybody is expected to demonstrate his concern somehow. And then mostly all it calls for is that you thrust an angry fist into the air. Somewhere along the line, I feel, the varied richness of life is lost sight of and so is the fact that every aspect of life, is it can be creatively indulged in, is the weapon of life itself against the greatest tyranny.””

“War and conquests in the twenty-first century suddenly look distressingly primitive… We need a new value system for resolving world conflicts.”

“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”

“My silence was my salvation; the silence of years of trying to say something without much understanding; the silence of desperate action. This would be the first silence that would carry meaning.”