You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

The reprisal against the suicide bomber does not bring peace. There is a suicide bomber, a reprisal and then a counter-reprisal. And it just goes on and on.

Too many people think that reconciliation means you soft-pedal differences.

No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it

When will we learn, when will the people of the world get up and say, Enough is enough. God created us for fellowship. God created us so that we should form the human family, existing together because we were made for one another. We are not made for an exclusive self-sufficiency but for interdependence, and we break the law of our being at our peril.

There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.

South Africa, so utterly improbably, is a beacon of hope in a dark and troubled world.