I tend to work best as a one-man Task Force, including even the roles of messenger, coffee maker and office cleaner.

You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.

Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.

Writers throughout the ages have one weapon, which is literature, but they also have their responsibilities as a citizen when literature does not seem to suffice. I mean, they are not mutually exclusive. One continues to write anyway but if you are called out to demonstrate, if people are being killed in the streets, it's hardly the moment to go for your pen and paper, you know, help in one way or the other.

The idea of having to make constant reference to politics is anathema to my calling as a writer.

My mind immediately shot to South Africa the moment I sat down to think what I was going to write, what I was going to say. There was no other choice.

When you start a political party, you are creating space for yourself. So many people were shocked when they realized that I was serious and had no interest in occupying any political position, so they started to fall out one by one.