You are damned and praised, or encouraged or discouraged by those who listen to you, and those who come to applaud you. And to me, those people are very important.

I look at a stream and I see myself: a native South African, flowing irresistibly over hard obstacles until they become smooth and, one day, disappear - flowing from an origin that has been forgotten toward an end that will never be.

Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can't do anything about that.

The conqueror writes history, they came, they conquered and they write. You don't expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us.

If given a choice, I would have certainly selected to be what I am: one of the oppressed instead of one of the oppressors.

In the mind, in the heart, I was always home. I always imagined, really, going back home.

I'm not a politician; I am a singer. Long ago, they said, 'That one, she sings politics.' I don't sing politics; I merely sing the truth.