A pearl diver in Japan.

A teacher. Teachers can change lives.

I really had no idea whatsoever. I feel that my life developed as I went along. I was never one of those people who, at an early age, had picked an objective and worked steadily towards it. All I knew was that I wanted to get involved in adventurous activity. I didn’t have any specific type of activity in mind, but I wanted to do things that were exciting and adventurous. I had a fairly diffused feeling as to what precisely it should be.

I know that for a very long time my consuming passion, which was confirmed when I contracted TB — I had TB when I was about 12 or so — was I wanted to be a physician and when I got TB I was even more determined. I want to be physician so that I can find a cure for the scourge. And, in fact, I was admitted to medical school. If we had had the funds maybe today I would have been a physician.

I was part of a very big ANC team, and I worked very, very closely with Oliver Tambo, who was the president of the ANC in exile, who had an enormous influence in my life.

The one is, to me, the question of conscience is number one. It comes before food. You can survive on almost anything, but your dignity depends on your conscience.

What are we fighting for, if not the right to express our humanity in all its forms, including the sense of fun and capacity for love and tenderness and our appreciation of the beauty of the world?

I want to make a movie. I’ve got a very strong movie in my head. And I’ve spoken to some movie people and I’ve said, “If you say it’s no go, I’ll drop it.” They said — two different people — “Do the script.” So I’m encouraged enough to do that.

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.

Monday to Friday, very, very industriously from ten in the morning ’til about six in the evening, I just sat and wrote, and revised and revised, and wrote.