Clearly, there needs to be an increase in the capacity of the railway system. That's why there are these projections of increasing the capacity to carry freight on the railways by 30% over the next five years or so, because the volume of goods moved up and down, imports, exports, and within the country, has grown much larger than the capacity. And this is part of the higher costs to business, because charges, for instance, at the ports become too high and they put up the prices of these goods, whether they are imports or exports. You want to reduce that.

Gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity. Trying times need courage and resilience. Our strength as a people is not tested during the best of times.

You'll find a lot of rural municipalities, very, very big district municipalities that actually have no tax base whereas our system of government presumes that the bulk of resources from government will come from resources that they will generate themselves.

The Auditor-General has been complaining year in and year out that the municipalities have not paid auditing fees. It is not because they are reluctant but they don't have the money to pay the Auditor. So, you can't say that you are throwing money at somebody who doesn't have money. Lots of the things that the municipalities can't do are because resources are not there.

I don't know why you should isolate women in this regard. If you have a traditional leader who says 'I am the sole exclusive ruler, I am the autocrat', it will affect everybody in the area, whether they are men or women. The challenge that South Africa faces, and it is not a new challenge, a whole range of African countries have faced this challenge, is that where you have institutional traditional leadership, which in our country is protected by the Constitution, how does that institution function side by side with a democratic system?

We do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest

We are not being arrogant or complacent when we are said that our country, as a united nation, has never in its entire history, enjoyed such a confluence of encouraging possibilities.