Cry, The Beloved Country

Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton is one the books that was recommended reading for my trip. It was first written in 1948 with two later editions.

Here are some passages that made me stop and do a bit of thinking.


"The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again. The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief-and again I ask your pardon-that it cannot be mended again. But the house that is broken, and the man that falls apart when the house is broken, these are the tragic things."


"Because the white man has power, we too want power, he said. But when a black man gets power, when he gets money, he is a great man if he is not corrupted. I have seen it often. He seeks power and money to put right what it wrong, and when he gets them, why, he enjoys the power and the money. Now he can gratify his lusts, now he can arrange ways to get white man's liquor, he can speak to thousands and hear them clap their hands. Some of us think when we have power, we shall revenge ourselves on the white man who has had power, and because our desire is corrupt, we arer corrupted and the power has no heart in it. But most white men do not know this truth about power, and they are afraid lest we get it.
He stood as though he as testing his exposition. Yes, that is right about power, he said. But there is only one thing that has power completely, and that is love. Because when a man loves he seeks no power, and therefore he has power. I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it.
I have only one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we have turned to hating."


"Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens the pages of the messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and chilodren bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart."


"I say we shall always have native crime to fear until the native people of this country have worthy purposes to inspire them and worthy goals to work for."


"What we did when we came to South Africa was permissible. It was permissible to develop our great resources with the aid of what labor we could find. It was permissible to use unskilled men for unskilled work. But it is not permissible to keep men unskilled for the sake of unskilled work.....It was permissible when we discovered gold to bring labor to the mines. It was permissible to build compounds and to keep women and children away from the towns.....It is not permissible for us to go on destroying family life when we know that we are destroying it....It was permissible to allow the destruction of a tribal system that impeded the growth of the country. It was permissible to believe that its destruction was inevitable. But it is not permissible to watch its destruction, and to replace it by nothing, or byy so little, that a whole people deteriorates, physically and morally."


"No one wishes to make the problem seem smaller than it is. No one wishes to make the solution seem easy. No one wishes to make light of the fears that beset us. But whether we be fearful or no, we shall never, because we are a Christian people, be able to evade the moral issues."


"Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering. I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering. For our Lord suffered. And I came to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering."



Sometimes I forget which country the writer is talking about.