We were asked to host the Pan African Parliament and we agreed to this.

There is a land problem in Zimbabwe, there is a need land for redistribution but it must be handled different, without violence, without conflict, within the context of the law, bearing in mind the interests of all Zimbabweans both black and white. It's necessary that the Zimbabwean government to respond positively to those sorts of messages.

A number of African countries came to us and said, we request that South Africa should not field a candidate, because so many other African countries wanted to, and, in any case, South Africa would continue to play a role in terms of building the African Union, and so on. And they actually said, please don't field a candidate, and we didn't. As I have said, it is not because we didn't have people who are competent to serve in these positions.

As we mourn President Mandela’s passing we must ask ourselves the fundamental question - what shall we do to respond to the tasks of building a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, a people-centred society free of hunger, poverty, disease and inequality, as well as Africa’s renaissance, to whose attainment President Nelson Mandela dedicated his whole life?

The problem is not a lack of understanding of what we are saying and doing; the problem is difference of opinion about what to do.

It is critically important that Iran should not develop nuclear weapons. And that the necessary interventions need to be made by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that, indeed, that does not happen, in the context of any nuclear generation of power.

South Africa has faced many problems in the past. You would understand those problems if you understood the history of the struggle to get rid of Apartheid and the struggle to establish democracy.