Haiti was a French colony, but in 1804, the slaves rose up and defeated the French and formed the Republic. For the last 200 years, Haiti has had a very unfortunate history.

Many of our own people here in this country do not ask about computers, telephones and television sets. They ask - when will we get a road to our village.

If you look at government policy generally, what government tries to do in all instances is to make sure that we take care of all elements that might relate to a particular issue.

What is the worst, is that you will have the meltdown of Zimbabwe that the IMF is talking about. And indeed what you will have is growing unemployment in Zimbabwe, growing impoverishment among the people, growing social conflict. And I think that is the worst sort of outcome, that collapse of Zimbabwe certainly would have a much, much worse effect on the region than mere image.

I don't think there would be many examples of South Africa pushing its weight around the African Continent. I don't think the facts would substantiate that argument.

South Africa now needs skilled and educated people to say 'How do we manage and develop this democratic country?'

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.