Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.

Serve others. The failing recipe for happiness and success is to want the good of others.

Too frequently we think we have to do spectacular things. Yet if we remember that the sea is actually made up of drops of water and each drop counts, each one of us can do our little bit where we are. Those little bits can come together and almost overwhelm the world. Each one of us can be an oasis of peace.

Africans believe in something that is difficult to render in English. We call it ubuntu, botho. It means the essence of being human. You know when it is there and when it is absent. It speaks about humaneness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and toughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

There is room for everyone; there is room for every culture, race, language and point of view.

Religious people should be very active if they believe that the world belongs to God, and politics is a very important part of the world, then they must participate in political affairs because they are alive. And if they don't act neither as the leaven or the salt or the light, then things can go horribly badly wrong.

It may be a procession of faithful failures that enriches the soil of godly success.