I have absolutely no problem with the press criticising policies and the things that we do, the things that we say.

For instance with regard to tourism, that we should be able to target people who are interested in investing in the tourism sector and explain that this is the size of the market, these are the incentives in this particular area, this is the capacity, this is what is needed.

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.

We need to increase the capacity; we need to improve performance so that we are more effective at lending that kind of support.

There are two pieces of legislation that are related. There's the Communal Land Rights Bill. Then there is the legislation that was approved which has to do with the role and the place and the function of the institution of traditional leadership. Now that legislation, not the Communal Land Rights Bill, provides for the setting up of particular committees that would work together with the elected municipalities.

How many murders are committed in Gauteng, or in the Western Cape, in a month? A week? A day? An hour? But of course we are not allowed to know for sure. In close and direct imitation of his apartheid models, Selebi ensures that no statistics about crime may be published regularly in the press.

I was very fortunate to be able to go to school and university, because many people our age couldn't complete school. This gift of education must be used in whatever ways we can to uplift the people.