The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman I'd done this privately I wanted him to look at it approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

With respect to Barack Obama let's face it Barack Obama is an iconic figure in the African-American community. We respect that. We understand that. African-Americans are going to vote for the first black president especially when he happens to share the liberal politics on economic issues that many in that community hold.

To live your life well and have respect for what came before or after - there's a strong respect for that in African culture.

I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent at least since the early nineteenth century when 3 000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in Africa.

Using the power you derive from the discovery of the truth about racism in South Africa you will help us to remake our part of the world into a corner of the globe on which all - of which all of humanity can be proud.

The large ensemble cast and the fact that it was being shot in New York combined with a lot of strong positive images as far as African Americans are concerned really turned me on to The Best Man.

So the experts think we could have an AIDS-free generation in Africa by 2015 even if the mothers are positive.

My Botswana books are positive and I've never really sought to deny that. They are positive. They present a very positive picture of the country. And I think that that is perfectly defensible given that there is so much written about Africa which is entirely negative.

It would be good for us Africans to accept ourselves as we are and recapture some of the positive aspects of our culture.

I've always gotten a positive reaction to doing African-American characters.

African art is functional it serves a purpose. It's not a dormant. It's not a means to collect the largest cheering section. It should be healing a source a joy. Spreading positive vibrations.

I guess probably in my time in politics it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community despite being subscription television's most valuable customers they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options.

African-Americans who might have disagreed with candidate Obama's left-of-center politics voted for him in 2008 because electing a candidate with brown skin was too historic an opportunity to miss.

Before I went to jail I was active in politics as a member of South Africa's leading organization - and I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think.

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections they want observers.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals but even as I withdrew into this reading I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

I'd say the best is when I was in Africa I saw a hippo in a house. Someone had a pet hippo. And they're meant to be one of the most dangerous animals on the planet and they had one that was sort of just wandering in and out of their house just sort of roaming about.

I have a pet lizard named Puff five goldfish - named Pinky Brain Jowels Pearl and Sandy an oscar fish named Chef two pacus an albino African frog named Whitey a bonsai tree four Venus flytraps a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.

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.

But since independence Gabon is one of the few countries in Central Africa that enjoys peace and stability.

Sinn Fein has productively taken the example of South Africa and as we develop the peace process we continue to use examples from South Africa.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call but I wrote letters I wrote short stories I wrote books.