Sophia Williams-De Bruyn
Sophia Williams-De Bruyn (née Williams; born 1938) OMSS is a former South African anti-apartheid activist. She was the first recipient of the Women's Award for exceptional national service. She is the last living leader of the Women's March.
Quotes
[edit]- even in the apartheid times, although there was segregation, there was all these laws that
restricted us from mixing with our own people, the group areas act was one of all these acts, influx control which controlled all our African people to come into the cities to work. So you had to have a permit to be allowed in to work, because the white people’s companies needed service, so they needed that, but they controlled it, is wasn’t a free access.
- And we believe in the same, and we should be calling it national core
values, not the values of such a race or the values of another race, or another culture. All of us should have the same core values, believe in the right things, in the right ethics, in truth and honesty, and to raise our children to believe in them too.
- What we did then was have a
common identity and a common ideology, a common goal. So it was with those qualities that we left here, and we just carried on as we worked together in South Africa, and worked together there. I remember our white compatriots that joined the freedom struggle in exile that were from home, that were keen really at home to do their part, and go into exile and carry forth the struggle, white comrades, young women and men.
- This democracy run by this government which is a liberated country, but nothing has changed. The
forms are still like what is your race group. When I do fill out a form that I have to fill in, it’s like I get stuck, what do I say here? Because I don’t believe in putting myself in a box, and I say nothing in that that I have to fill in. So I don’t fill in anything in that box, I leave it.
- The country is bedeviled with a lot of issues. And you know you have hardly been recovering from the one blast, or controversy, then you when you turn around, there is another volley
hitting you again, as the ANC. So I know they have been bedeviled by all these controversies. But I think they must set aside time now, and make time to foster non-racialism .
