Diary of a Bad Year - pg. 104

During the years when Cape Town was my home, I thought of it as "my" city not just because I had been born there but above all because I knew the history of the place deeply enough to see its past in palimpsest beneath its present. But to the bands of young blacks who roam its streets today looking for action, it is "their" city and I am the outsider. History has no life unless you give it a home in your consciousness; it is a load no free person can be forced to take on.