Thursday Quote

"They had a farewell service for her [Mrs. Jones] in St. George's Presbyterian Church, Johannesburg. Black man, white man, coloured man, European and African and Asian, Jew and Christian and Hindu and Moslem, all had come there to honour her memory - their hates and their fears, their prides and their prejudices, all for this moment forgotten. The lump in my throat was not only for that great woman who was dead, not only because all of South Africa was reconciled under the roof of this church, but also because it was unreal as a dream, and no one knew how many years must pass and how many lives be spent and how much suffering be undergone, before it all came true. And when it came true only those who were steeped in the past would have any understanding of the greatness of the present.

"As for me, I was overwhelmed. I was seeing a vision, which was never to leave me, illuminating the darkness of the days through which we now live. I had a feeling of unspeakable sorrow and unspeakable joy. What life had failed to give so many of these people, this woman had given them, an assurance that their work was known and of good report, that they were not nameless or meaningless. And man has no hunger like this one. Had they all come, no church would have held them all; the vast, voiceless multitude of Africa, nameless and obscure, moving with painful ascent to that self-fulfillment no human being may with justice be denied, encouraged and sustained by this woman who withheld nothing from them, who gave her money, her comfort, her gifts, her home, and finally her life, not with any appearance of prodigality nor with fine-sounding words, but with a naturalness that concealed all evidence of the steep moral climb by which alone such eminence is attained.

"In that church one was able to see, beyond any possibility of doubt, that what this woman had striven for was the highest and best kind of thing to strive for in a country like South Africa. I knew then I would never again be able to think in terms of race and nationality. I was no longer a white person but a member of the human race." - Alan Paton, The Hero of Currie Road