Peter Abrahams
Peter Abrahams
Peter Henry Abrahams Deras, commonly known as Peter Abrahams, is a South African novelist, journalist and political commentator...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 March 1919
accepted access anywhere born conferred empire entitled finding social south speaking special trade union white
Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship.
homes living looking money white work
My mother went to work in the homes of white folk, usually living in and looking after their children. The money was small.
joseph white
Joseph and his mother come from the black kings who were before the white man.
blacks central instilled majority south whites
In East, South and Central Africa, the minority manipulated the majority into believing the minority was the majority, that there were more whites in the world than blacks; instilled in the blacks a sense of inferiority, inadequacy, worthlessness.
africa among attitude forever gestures life lucky meeting point reached south straight whites
For me, personally, life in South Africa had come to an end. I had been lucky in some of the whites I had met. Meeting them had made a straight 'all-blacks-are-good, all-whites-are-bad' attitude impossible. But I had reached a point where the gestures of even my friends among the whites were suspect, so I had to go or be forever lost.
ask haunt miss
We do not ask the right questions when we are young, so we miss the important answers. Now it is too late to ask, too late for the illuminating answers, and the unanswered questions haunt us for a lifetime.
among individual man number tribal western
Tribal man is not an individual in the western sense. Psychologically and emotionally, he is the present living personification of a number of forces, among the most important of which are the ancestral dead.
calendar community events unlike
We have a comprehensive calendar of events unlike any other in the city.
crafted people product relate
We've crafted a product that people are really going to relate to.
main
We like him to say we are his main competitor,
destroy hard middle passed twentieth
To have the ability to destroy all and not to do it was one of the hard tests humanity passed - but only just - in the middle of the twentieth century.
aware difference numbers
There is a qualitative difference between being a minority and being a majority. Majorities are stronger under psychological pressure because numbers count. But only if they are aware of it.
black brutal defence large men numbers threatened whatever women
The racism of the Nazis threatened to make whatever we had experienced look like child's play. If they could be so brutal to the Jews, what would they do to the blacks? So large numbers of black young men and women rallied to the defence of the empire.
among either found gracious heroes men places respect simple tolerance
The only places where I have found that simple human dignity, that respect for the other man, and the gracious feel of tolerance and humanity have not been either among the heroes of the class-struggle or the 'thinking men' but among my simple 'backward' people.