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.

The reason I joined the struggle against Apartheid was because you had this system of oppression, which affected everybody who was black. Whether you were old or young, man or woman, in a village or a town, it didn't matter.

Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can stop us now!

The issue of racism and racial prejudice. It is very, very difficult to discuss. It is difficult to discuss the issue of apartheid. Many have made the observation that it is very difficult to find anyone in SA who ever supported apartheid because everyone was opposed, it was against our will and so on.

I think the critical point, really, is that we need to focus black economic empowerment more on the creation of new wealth rather than on these big deals that have been characteristic of this process in the past, of people going to banks, borrowing a lot of money, buying this and when the shares don't perform very well, the shares go back to the banks, because there's other people who own this anyway. I think we need to re-focus it so that it really does impact on growth, new investment, new employment and a general, better spread of wealth in South Africa.

Those communal areas have got elected municipalities, which have got to do their work as, as fully, democratically elected municipal councils.

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.