Africa Quotes

It's a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

I would hazard a guess that we have found fossilized human remains of at least a thousand different specimens in South and East Africa, more or less complete at that. I think this is where the prelude to human history was primarily played out.

I've been to Africa three times. All right? You can't bring Western reasoning into the culture. The same way you can't bring it into fundamental Islam.

Conditions were so hard. To send the news out, telex was the only means, but telex was very rare in Africa. So if somebody was flying to Europe, we gave him correspondence to send after he arrived.

In two years, there were 22 military coups d'etat, essentially in Africa and the third world. The coup d'etat of Algiers, in 1965, is what opened the path.

We emigrated to South Africa and later to Canada so I went to school in several places.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

The World Health Organisation has a lot of its medical experts sitting in Geneva while hospitals in Africa have no drugs and desperate patients are forced to seek medication on the black market.

With my government, we engaged in bringing our help to fights for national freedom. At that precise moment, several countries were still colonised or had barely overcome colonisation. This was the case in practically all of Africa. We supported them.

We believe that the world, too, can destroy apartheid, firstly by striking at the economy of South Africa.

It is important to stress: Africa is also a victim of the September 11 attacks.

One is that if women's sexuality in Africa wasn't under assault, if women were able to say no, if women weren't subject to predatory attacks by men, or predatory behaviour generally, then you would have a disease in Africa called AIDS. But you wouldn't have a pandemic.

As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won't make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa - and it's about getting a balance.

South Africa had a long record of studies in prehistory, going back to the end of the last century.

Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the earth?

I think we have got the wood on South Africa, but that does not mean they are not a good team. They intimidate a lot of teams but we intimidate them. There is no disrespect for South Africa; they are a very good team.

While a handful of countries and a small number of people are leading ample life, dozens of countries and billions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America are being left in absolute poverty.

In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe's development.

It is important to stress: Africa is also a victim of the September 11 attacks.

There are so many things I want to do. Like, I want to get an artist, a musician, a photographer, and a bunch of dancers that I know and just travel across Africa and just film it and just see what happens. Do and learn as much as I possibly can. Luckily, I have a lot more time.

There is a greater fatigue concerning the African problem today than five or 10 years ago. The situation now in Africa is worse today than it was 10 years ago.

The biggest problem in South Africa is that we have a disrupted timeline. Historically, politically, spiritually, economically, in people's minds, in people's heads.

When a pile of cups is tottering on the edge of the table and you warn that they will crash to the ground, in South Africa you are blamed when that happens.

Well, I think by any expectation South Africa has come a tremendously long way. We've seen a society that many people thought couldn't withstand a peaceful transition to democracy without a great deal of violence, in fact, make that transition and do it in relative peace and security.

When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don't think that is the case now. And it's a place where people still kid themselves - you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it's not going to happen. It's never going to happen.

It is important to stress: Africa is also a victim of the September 11 attacks.

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

I can't on my own change the regime in South Africa or teach the Palestinians to learn to live with the Israelies, but I can start with me.

Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa.