The matter of social security and these grants is to help to address the levels of poverty in the country.

What moved us was not so much what would it do for South Africa, but there has been a great keenness on the Continent that the location of the Pan African Parliament must add to its credibility. And, so we said, fine, it's a contribution to this process of the democratisation of the African Continent.

For an investor who is sitting in the United States, and South Africa is very far from the United States, you need to go out to that investor to say, these are the possibilities in this particular sector.

You need to be able to do that to market these possibilities to these specific investors who would be interested in a sector of that kind. It's what would be normally done by anybody with regard to attracting investment to particular sectors of the economy.

I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.

We would take the same position as the majority of the world about this, including this issue where Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon made a commitment to pull Israeli troops out of Gaza.

It is quite easy to understand what China would need from the African continent with regards to its own economy, raw materials, oil and a market for manufactured goods. As I say it is not difficulty to understand and perfectly legitimate. There is nothing wrong with that.