Top 176 Quotes & Sayings by Thabo Mbeki - Page 2

I am sure it is in the medical textbooks, there are many things that cause immune deficiency and you will find therefore in the South African HIV and AIDS programme, that it will say that part of what we have got to do is to make sure that our health infrastructure, our health system is able to deal adequately with all of the illnesses that are a consequence of AIDS.

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.

A modern economy and society requires skilled people, so you need to train them.

That is one of the reasons why we have raised this matter about the need to focus quite sharply on the function of local government, but also on the resourcing of local government. Because it may very well be that we say to local government, you have got to run an indigent policy.

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.

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.

That it is not enough to catch a criminal and get them convicted and so on, because the victim remains with the consequences of the crime. Something needs to be done. Let's complete that process, interact with civil society about this, so that we will specify what is it that we do in the context of that Charter that would then make this positive impact on people who might have been affected by crime.

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.

We are improving the entirety of the system. You have got to make the grants available.

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 would continue to handle our relations with the rest of the Continent with that kind of sensitivity.

In Africa you have space...there a profound sense of space here, space and sky

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.

Historically during the years of the White minority regimes, the State, the national Government held this land in trust for these communities. We said, but no, why should we do that ( return the land to the communities). We didn't say return the land to particular traditional leaders, but to the communities.

As I said, the matter of the Pan African Parliament was raised with us by other African countries who said we should host.

You have to make sure that [grants] reach people by virtue of their Identity Documents.

It is quite easy to understand what China would need from the African continent with regards to its own economy, raw materials, oil and a market for manufactured goods. As I say it is not difficulty to understand and perfectly legitimate. There is nothing wrong with that.

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

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.

Of course we run a very open economy, and therefore what happens in the rest of the world, in economic terms, obviously has an impact on us.

We are continuously looking at the question of increasing the capacity of Home Affairs and that is why Home Affairs introduced mobile units, to be able to reach people. The matter of the establishment of the Social Security Agency was to deal with the matter of the more efficient distribution of these grants, the reductions in the levels of corruption and greater sensitivity. You are dealing with vulnerable people, like the elderly, who you needed to find a way of addressing, so that people don't have to be waiting in the sun in the queue, and so on.

We were asked to host the Pan African Parliament and we agreed to this.

There is a section of our population in South Africa that you can't expect to get integrated in the economy of its own. These are people without skills and that will include young people who might very well have matric certificates, but don't have the skills to be absorbed in the economy. So we need to target people like those in a special way, in a focused way so that they have the skills and the capacity to participate in the economy. That requires special programmes.

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.

We are very keen to see that nobody gets ill-treated or abused.

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.

A democratic government in South Africa is not a threat to white people.

It will be a comprehensive response. The ID issue is one of them. It will make sure that Home Affairs has the capacity to reach people and to make sure that the people themselves know that they have got to get these documents and where to go to get them.

The matter of who governs Zimbabwe is a matter that is in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe.

We need to do a lot of restructuring of the existing ports, particularly Durban. The separation of oversight and regulation from operations in the port, the possibility of bringing in private investors, to put in new investment to build capacity in the port. So, the restructuring of the ports will take place like that.

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.

There are two pieces of legislation that are related. There's the Communal Land Rights Bill. Then there is the legislation that was approved which has to do with the role and the place and the function of the institution of traditional leadership. Now that legislation, not the Communal Land Rights Bill, provides for the setting up of particular committees that would work together with the elected municipalities.

There must be public servants who are working regularly among the people.

We differ with the Israeli Government about a number of things, and they know that. In the past, I have discussed with Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon these issues. The fact that we differ about something or the other shouldn't be a matter of strain.

It is critically important that Iran should not develop nuclear weapons. And that the necessary interventions need to be made by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that, indeed, that does not happen, in the context of any nuclear generation of power.

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.

I must say that, in the first instance, we got the request from many African countries who said, look, you people had better host the Parliament. So, the general feeling around the Continent was that it would be better that the Parliament was based here. In part, because of what this country has done with regard to establishing a democratic system, and we have responded to that. We have said, fine.

It is difficult to discuss... history.. it is more difficult to talk about today.. simple things…

Clearly, we are very, very concerned about the situation, for instance, that has been going on in Gaza.

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.

Your medical documents will say Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome that is AIDS. What that means you have got this challenge of immune deficiency. Alright what causes immune deficiency? HIV. Alright. Is that all that causes immune deficiency? The medical textbooks will say there are other things that cause immune deficiency. There is also genetic immune deficiency that is a different phenomenon.

The problem is not unique; the challenge is not unique to South Africa. Other African countries have faced it. But in our case, we have got to solve the problem. You have got an institutional traditional leadership, which functions in a particular way, in for instance, your communal areas.

Those communal areas have got elected municipalities, which have got to do their work as, as fully, democratically elected municipal councils.

The engagements with the International Investment Council have developed in a very interesting way. It is, again, the point I raised at the beginning.

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.

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.

We have to continue to confront the challenge of corruption within the public service.

I know there is a lot of concern I know about plans that Iran might have to develop nuclear weapons which arises from positions that Iran took in the past when in fact it did not disclose things to the IAEA… because they were hiding something. I can understand that.

Pope Benedict XVI assumes leadership at a critical time in which the world's collective wisdom and leadership including that of the religious community is most important to face up to challenges of deepening poverty and under-development afflicting many people of the world.

There is a very long list of parties in this year's election, some of the parties I have never heard of.

I don't know why you should isolate women in this regard. If you have a traditional leader who says 'I am the sole exclusive ruler, I am the autocrat', it will affect everybody in the area, whether they are men or women. The challenge that South Africa faces, and it is not a new challenge, a whole range of African countries have faced this challenge, is that where you have institutional traditional leadership, which in our country is protected by the Constitution, how does that institution function side by side with a democratic system?

I should also say that apart from the negotiations that are taking place within the WTO, we are ourselves involved in all manner of bilateral negotiations, or, if they are not bilateral, with the South African Customs Union and the European Union. All the member countries of the European Union have now ratified the agreement that we have with the EU and that opens up the EU market in various ways.

One of the issues that I have raised in that context is our transport system, road, rail and ports. We have raised this before, that the South African economy has grown at a rate that has overtaken the capacity of the transport system. And therefore, we have said that it is necessary to expand our capacity in the ports.

China surely must be interested in a more stable, non-antagonistic relationship with the African continent precisely because of its own needs. And therefore would have to say in our own interests, as China, it is necessary that we participate in the process of the development of the African continent.

If you look for instance at the automobile industry, part of the reason that you have the expansion of that sector, is precisely because we have gone out to talk to the automobile companies to explain government policy with regard to that sector, to talk to them about the MIDP and things like that. And indeed, it has been a very important part of attracting those investors to put in money in the South African economy and build motorcars in South Africa.

I must say also, that we are not talking just about foreign investors.

I am sure that it wouldn’t be in the long-term interests of China which would continue to depend on these African resources for a very long time to see the emergence of any sense of hostility animosity, tension, da da da, between itself and the African continent.

Clearly, there needs to be an increase in the capacity of the railway system. That's why there are these projections of increasing the capacity to carry freight on the railways by 30% over the next five years or so, because the volume of goods moved up and down, imports, exports, and within the country, has grown much larger than the capacity. And this is part of the higher costs to business, because charges, for instance, at the ports become too high and they put up the prices of these goods, whether they are imports or exports. You want to reduce that.

We raised the matter of an agreement that was reached at the Growth and Development Summit, which was that we should access a certain part, 5% was mentioned, of the funds in the hands of the institutional investors, domestically, for investment in the real economy. That being an agreement of the Growth and Development Summit, we will engage South African business to see how we can make that a practical thing. So, there is a different set of engagement with local business.

We very constantly run this campaign to encourage people to go and get Identity Documents, to register, and so on. We'll continue to do that.