Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
The King had been a good friend of the government and the people of South Africa and we all mourn his passing with our brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia.
With me, as a town clerk or city manager, there are certain things that I'm supposed to do - if I don't do them, then I don't deserve to continue in this post.
Gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity. Trying times need courage and resilience. Our strength as a people is not tested during the best of times.
When will the day come that our dignity will be fully restored, when the purpose of our lives will no longer be merely to survive until the sun rises tomorrow!
It's very worrying at this time in the world that any point of view should be prohibited, that's banned, there are heretics that should be burned at the stake.
We will continue to count on your unwavering support and commitment to working with leaders of our continent in bringing about the desired renaissance of Africa.
It wouldn't sit easily on one's conscience that you had been warned and there could be danger, but nevertheless you went ahead and said let's dispense these drugs.
We are a very big mining country and historically have been exporters of raw minerals. There is no particular reason why we should not be processing those further.
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.
You can see that there is an increase in the volume of freight that moves by air. And so, we have got to solve the problem by making sure that that is done properly.
Our experience over the last 20 years has shown that indeed people must themselves become their own liberators. You cannot wait for somebody else to come and rescue you.
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.
You can see now with all the assurance that people have about the overall general management of the economy, they then ask more specific questions that we are able to answer.
We want the National Intelligence, we want the Police, we want the Scorpions, any other institutions, the tax people, and so on, the totality of these bodies, to get together.
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.
Part of the issue around communal land, which became a matter of controversy, is that we are saying that this land must go back to communities. Not chiefs and traditional leaders.
It's a big problem in South Africa up to this day: many people want to open factories, they want to invest, but then they discover that they don't have the skilled people to employ.
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.
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.
That surely must be a concern to anyone who decides this drug must be given to stop transmissions, again from mother to child, which is extremely costly and must be taken into account.
The poor prey on one another because their lives offer no hope and communicate the tragic message to these human beings that they have no possibility to attain a decent standard of living.
I would regret it if I'd failed at school and university, because if I had, I would have lacked the levels of education necessary to making a serious contribution to building South Africa.
As a consequence of the victories we have registered during our first ten years of freedom, we have laid a firm foundation for the new advances we must and will make during the next decade.
While the WTO negotiations will continue, there are other trade negotiations of a bilateral nature, which among other things, should help to open up these markets for South African products.
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.
The matter of people being attracted to other countries is a permanent problem in my view, it doesn't only face South Africa. A whole lot of countries in the world are faced with this problem.
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.
The matter of who governs Zimbabwe is a matter that is in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe. The matter of who governs the people of South Africa is in the hands of the people of South Africa.
South Africa has faced many problems in the past. You would understand those problems if you understood the history of the struggle to get rid of Apartheid and the struggle to establish democracy.
If you sit in a position where decisions that you take would have a serious effect on people, you can't ignore a lot of experience around the world which says this drug has these negative effects.
One of the things that became clear, and which was actually rather disturbing, was the fact that there was a view which was being expressed by people whose scientific credentials you can't question
One of the things that became clear, and which was actually rather disturbing, was the fact that there was a view which was being expressed by people whose scientific credentials you can't question.
We are quite convinced, and we say this to the Palestinians, that violence is not going to solve the problem of Israel and the Middle East. We say that to the Israelis. We say it to the Palestinians.
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.
I am quite convinced that we need to increase the resources that go to municipalities if we want the municipalities to do the things the Constitution and the law say they must do. It can't be avoided.
I think the Internet is absolutely extraordinary. It's very, very useful and I think one of the things we've got to do is make sure that the African continent gets on to that information super highway.
There are established processes of consultation between the Government, the parastatals and the trade unions, which have worked in the past. And I don't see any particular reason why they shouldn't work.
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.
The Communal Land Rights Bill then said, since there would be those collectives set up in terms of the other legislation, there was no need for them to set up other structures to deal with the land issues.
We can't treat the matter of black economic empowerment as just the redistribution of existing wealth. It really has to focus on new investment, on growth, on development of employment and so on and so on.
We've had a long wrangle with the pharmaceutical industry about parallel imports, and what we were saying is we want to make medicines and drugs as affordable as a possible to what is largely a poor population.
I think that part of the problem that arose with that legislation, is that there probably wasn't sufficient information - probably there was misinformation. I am not sure that they have looked at the legislation.
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.
The reason I joined the struggle against Apartheid was because you had this system of oppression, which affected everybody who was black. Whether you were old or young, man or woman, in a village or a town, it didn't matter.
At the same time, you have got these traditional councils. And the challenge is how to make sure that they function together [with municipal councils], smoothly, and that is part of what this legislation is trying to address.
You can't abandon people there and say, go and find a job, when you know they are not going to be able to find one, and therefore starve to death. So we have got to address that matter, but we have got to address it systematically.
I get a sense that we've all been educated into one school of thought. I'm not surprised at all to find among the overwhelming majority of scientists, are people who would hold one particular view because that's all they're exposed to.
We identified various sectors of the economy, which we said were growth sectors. I have mentioned tourism. We said, for instance, agro-business. We grow a lot of food and fruit and things like that. It must be possible to process those.
There is a tendency just to talk about foreign investors. Over 80 per cent of new investment in the South African economy is South African and therefore the engagement of the South African investor is also a critical part of this process.