9 Quotes by Sindiwe Magona

I came to see I was not just alone; I was free. Free of him. Free to be.So many women's lives are hindered, hampered, and ruined by husbands who will not leave long after they have ceased to be husbands or fathers. Dead wearing a hat, these men actively and energetically visit untold woe on those they once had once. I was not thus afflicted I saw.

I came to see I was not just alone; I was free. Free of him. Free to be.So many women's lives are hindered, hampered, and ruined by husbands who will not leave long after they have ceased to be husbands or fathers. Dead wearing a hat, these men actively and energetically visit untold woe on those they once had loved. I was not thus afflicted I saw.

In such a people world, filled with a real, immediate, and tangible sense of belongingness, did I spend the earliest years of my life. I was not only wanted, I was loved. I was cherished.The adults in my world, no doubt, had their cares and their sorrows. But childhood, by its very nature, is a magic-filled world, egocentric, wonderfully carefree, and innocent. Mine was all these things and more.

What I had not known was that perception of people like us did not quite coincide with our perception of who we were and what we were about. More than anything, however, being a domestic servant did more to me than it did for me. It introduced me to the fundamentals of racism.

It was natural given such clear teachings that I readily took the blame for the disastrous situation in which I found myself. My understanding of my religion offered me little solace. Indeed, by encouraging self-blame, it deprived me of a sense of justice...of being the injured one.

Central to the stories in which people featured, was the bond of love with the concomitants: duty, obedience, responsibility, honor, and orderliness; always orderliness. Like the seasons of the year, life was depicted full of cause and effect, predictability and order; connectedness and oneness.

CWC (Church Women Concerned) enabled us as women in that part of South Africa, to see ourselves as ordinary citizens who found themselves in decidedly far from ordinary circumstances. In truth, some of us were not even considered citizens, strictly speaking: the African had, by this time, been completely deprived of that privilege.

As far back as I can remember, there has always been a place to which I belonged with a certainty that nothing has been able to take from me. When I say place, that means less a geographical locality and more a group of people with whom I am connected and to whom I belong.

God knew the African woman was going to have a very, very hard life. That is why He gave her skin as tough as Mother Earth herself. He gave her that tough, timeless skin so that her woes would not be written all over her face, so that her face would not be a map to her torn and tattered heart.