As we mourn President Mandela’s passing we must ask ourselves the fundamental question - what shall we do to respond to the tasks of building a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, a people-centred society free of hunger, poverty, disease and inequality, as well as Africa’s renaissance, to whose attainment President Nelson Mandela dedicated his whole life?

Our troops are in Burundi. We were requested by African countries who said, look, the United Nations is not moving on this matter, can you people deploy people, so we can move Burundi forward.

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.

It is also important to respect the fact that Iran is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which treaty spells out the rights and obligations of signatures to the treaty and therefore that we can’t deny Iran the rights due to it as a signature of the NPT.

The National Empowerment Fund we established some time back. And one of the challenges was to build a strong enough asset base for it to operate in a credible manner. And we believe that it can.

As we mourn President Mandela’s passing we must ask ourselves the fundamental question - what shall we do to respond to the tasks of building a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, a people-centred society free of hunger, poverty, disease and inequality, as well as Africa’s renaissance, to whose attainment President Nelson Mandela dedicated his whole life?

Certainly the Government has tried to handle the matter of our relations with the rest of the Continent in a very sensitive manner.