One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the themes of renewal and community rebuilding after hardship.
Alan Paton's quote speaks to the resilience of a community that begins the process of healing and rebuilding after experiencing adversity. In the context of Johannesburg, it symbolizes the hope and determination to restore not only physical spaces but also the emotional and spiritual essence of the people, highlighting the importance of unity in overcoming challenges.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of coming together to rebuild after a crisis.
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.
Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.
Work for legal reform takes place only within the framework of the social form created by the last revolution.
You see people who are still there doing things but their souls have disappeared so there's no joy in it anymore, so I'm scared of not listening to the part of me that knows when it's time to stop something and start something new.
The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound.
We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.
Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch.
Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
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