The early influence in my life I think was my father. That’s the earliest influence. He and his circle of friends. Usually, in our society, children are supposed to be neither seen nor heard. When elders are around, they’re supposed to very respectfully leave them alone. But I was curious. I just loved their debates. They used to get excited over issues, and so somehow I was allowed to eavesdrop, unlike the other children. And I picked up some of the ideas that they had, and I would ask questions. I was known as the questioner. Afterwards, I would ask questions, and my father would indulge me by trying to explain things to me. So that’s one of the reasons I consider him the earliest influence. And also, he had a small library, and I used to go into his library and try and read the books which I found there. Later on, as my circle of adult acquaintances increased, I think the next influence on me was my uncle, the Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kuti, who was another very erudite person, a great educationist. I used to visit them in Igbein, where he lived with his wife and they ran a school. So on weekends sometimes I would go there. And of course it was the usual story. I wanted to listen to them discussing and so on. Don’t misunderstand me. I was also very playful. I loved disappearing by myself, climbing trees, all that I did. But additionally, I was just fascinated by the whole discourse. Exchange of ideas between adults just used to fascinate me for some reason. I was never tired of listening to them. So my uncle was my next great influence.

I think the first real big influence was Colin Harvey [former Everton coach], I went and played for the U19s for Colin when I was 14, and that's really when the tactical part of the game came in.

My parents inspired me by their example. They both grew up in the Depression, and both of them had to quit school when they were quite young to work, because there actually was no choice. So, though they’re intelligent people — and my father in particular is interested in books and has subsequently, since his retirement, attended classes at the University of Buffalo — nonetheless, they didn’t have any opportunity to be educated. So they’ve always impressed me with their resilience, their good spirits, their courage. It wasn’t an easy life, and I won’t go into details, but there were a lot of problems. And yet they were never defeated. Somebody else might have been defeated. Someone else might have been really depressed, or become an alcoholic or something, because there were personal problems and economic crises. But I just remember them carrying on and just doing their lives. They really made a strong impression on me.

My father was my major teacher, disciplinarian. But my mother lent a lot to me and to my life, in that, when things weren’t going right, or when my father was too tough, I had the soft feel of my mother to help me, and she did. And she a lot of the times gave me confidence that I needed to overcome some of the things that happened that weren’t so pleasant.

But there’s nothing like that quality of leading a decent, dignified life, meeting up with other people who have similar ideals, expressing kindness and love and curiosity and challenging and argument and the excitement of ideas. Ideas can be marvelous.

It’s art that influenced me while I was in exile – Dumile Feni’s work.

We haven’t crossed the frontier of unemployment, of poverty, of dispossession, of landlessness, of homelessness, of lack of access to health, to education, all those different things. We just have to keep going steadily, steadily, to plan well, to involve the people and not simply deliver things from the top and hope that people will be grateful, and get upset when they’re not grateful.

And into the darkness I said, “What happened?” and a woman’s voice said, “It was a car bomb,” and I collapsed into darkness again, but with a sense of euphoria. I’d survived.

I think of two great personalities who were locked up in the prison where we’ve now built the Constitutional Court: Gandhi and Mandela.

I’d say, “I’m going to be a doctor.” I don’t know why I changed. I know my dad had something to do with it.