All Quotes

"This is very disappointing. I have tried to engage the President, the Attorney General and ministry officials to no avail. Clearly they don’t want the council to succeed under my tenure. I am now denied access to the Office of the President."

"Whenever there is a problem the people look at the mayor and the councillors. They hold the people that they elected accountable. They want answers from us when in fact we are just ceremonial figures."

"Our system creates mayors who are not empowered by structures of governance. We have mayors who are just ceremonial, who cannot act on the mandate of their communities."

"I really don’t have input on the way the council is run. The resolutions made by council are just a waste of time because management is not bound to implement any of them."

"Getting to this stage of the tournament is a big deal, not just for us as players but for the entire country."

"Let us not forget our history that although we continue to be troubled by stray livestock from Tlokweng, Gaborone was built on Batlokwa land, hence the need to recognise their importance to the existence of our city."

"We have also held consultative meetings with the leadership of South East District to try and address such challenges."

"The Roman Catholic Church which owns a big chunk of land are open to some arrangements and give Government some land. Government is not willing to sit down with them."

"We cannot have older men who continue sleeping with children. Ba tshwanetse go fag*****."

"Those wanting me to remain in the UDC fold should know that I will still be serving and representing them at the Gaborone North constituency without any fear or favouritism. My political affiliation will not change who I am."

"Resign? Why should I resign over petty utterances motivated by witch hunting? I cannot resign over allegations that do not have evidence. This is just a moment of storms in the life of a child of God. Opposing forces are always out to destroy you. These people are just dragging my name in the mud."

"But unfortunately we have a situation where most of the contractors doing projects in Gaborone are not Batswana. You will find that Asian contractors have taken all the jobs and this does not help in citizen empowerment."

"I told him, “You had the power to do something. You did nothing.” When a rival player wanted me to stay on, I said, “You shut the fuck up as well. What did you do about it? Do you like what they’re doing?”"

"They knew what was happening to me. They heard the racism — and they just accepted it. The parents stayed quiet. The referee? Nothing. The coach? “Just ignore it."

"So I did. I stored my anger inside. I became numb to it."

"But when I heard those monkey noises in January 2013, all the pain, all the sadness — it all came out. I snapped. I didn’t care if I got in trouble. I had worked all my life to play for one of the biggest teams in the world, and now I was going to be treated like I was when I was a kid?? I just went, No. I’m done with this. I’m going to fight these guys."

"What we need to ask ourselves is are we ready for climate change and how can we adapt to it so as to reduce the effects of it in our country."

"We are no longer having normal patterns of rainfall and that has changed our ploughing cycles."

"We cannot fill up our dams because some parts of the country receive little or no rainfall at all."

"We can create green jobs as one way of beating unemployment."

"For the ESP to work, these are some of the core issues that the government needs to handle."

"At Block 8 Batswana no longer own land as it has been bought by the Nigerians and Indians."

"I am very disappointed on you honorable MPs at how you continue to intentionally break the quorum on Fridays. After registering you just disappear. I thought that as the whole Parliament business closes you were going to cooperate so that we wrap up everything before the July session. This conduct should end because it means like that is all about the seating allowance."

"It is only through self-help projects, partnerships and or donor funding from development partners such as the honorary consulate of the democratic socialist Republic of Sri Lanka that we can realise our development agenda and goals."

"It is a place where democracy manifests itself in the form of consultation and public participation from both the government and the governed. The kgotla serves as a neutral place where customary law is implemented and justice is served."

"Owing to serious budgetary constraints throughout the years, even with the advent of the Ipelegeng programme, this project never kicked off but will from today finally see the light of day thanks to the generosity of the Honorary Consulate of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka."

"It is the network of kgotlas that provide the foundation of the people's democracy."

"My biggest fear has always been that someone would be trapped back here and couldn't get help. No ambulance or police would be able to get through. It's good to know that after all of these years, my family will be safe. I've been stuck many times from the outside and couldn't get home and I've been stuck on the inside and couldn't get out."

"He's been in the Coast Guard his entire life, and one of the things he does and does well is what the Coast Guard motto is, be always prepared. He takes every new event and gets down and starts working and sees it to its end."

"& so I bring my journal writing & sit amongst / the ferociously chic at Cafe Flor (which I call / Cafe Voyeur) in an era when everyone has a therapist & no one has a lover. and I have a slice of carrot cake / and a frothy mochachina, sprinkled generously with nutmeg / & cinnamon, sitting there pondering "The Convolution of Desire / & Terror that is the paradigm of human sexuality." And I write / it down completely impressed with myself, smug with the glow, / wondering if anyone-man or woman, or middle aged transsexual / with bad makeup from the nether twilight world of the Tenderloin-- / would stop by to cruise me. YES, EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE / I HAVE AN OUTSTANDING MOMENT OF OBSOLETE HAPPINESS."

"Sybil was now banging on about how hard Humph worked and the havoc caused by boarding school fees for seven. Jack refrained from telling her that you would expect seven children to be more expensive to raise than one or two and that no one had an electric cattle prod on either her rump or Humph's as they herded their offspring into private schools."

"Later that evening, he sat in the bar, pint in one hand, pipe in the other, with good food beneath his belt and listened to the natural harmony of the Welsh fishermen singing their songs of Wales and the sea"

"Thus, science, technology, engineering and mathematics applications should be at highest levels."

"The Reset Agenda priority of digitilisation speaks to inclusivity, which the Botswana digital transformation strategy, dubbed Smart Botswana is focused on."

"Radio brings unity in the nation, informs people and provides platform for peaceful dialogue."

"When you face tough times but keep on going; when you're discouraged and doubtful, but still show up; when you are not sure of what to do, but you give it you best anyway--you will, in the end, succeed. Just be willing to do whatever it takes."

"I feel the word iconic is overused and inappropriately attached to lesser events or items than is deserved. However, I am going to use it to describe this book. A River Rules My Life was first published in 1963 and reprinted 9 times. Why? Because it is engaging, entertaining and captures a world within our nation but apart from the normal Kiwi experiences. To add to this, 50 years on, we can include a view of times past, when battling the elements and life without technology was a possibility."

"Before I was married I knew nothing about station life," she said. "I could have distinguished between a cow and a sheep and I could sometimes tell the difference between a lamb chop and a pork chop, but that was the limit of my experience, and I was determined to keep my ignorance to myself"

"The river was my Rubicon', Mona said. 'I had heard stories about the terrible Wilberforce: so many people had been drowned in it. I tried not to think about the time when I could have to cross it. But the road had come to an end at a corrugated iron shed. Somewhere beyond it I knew we would find the station, Mount Algidus, a green, high-country oasis amid the snow and the tussock."

"Wellington, with its hills and fault lines and glittering sea, is like a perfect espresso cup of culture and energy. It’s also home to a lot of quiet minorities, like the Greek community I come from, who carry stories that might be less well known than others. I can’t wait to return"

"In the story of the Trojan Horse, after a ten-year siege, the Greeks pretend to sail away and leave a “gift” of a wooden horse on the doorstep of the city of Troy. The Trojans pull the horse into their city. But, under the cover of night, a select force of men creep out of it, torching the city, and thus winning the war for the Greeks."

"I am a Greek-New Zealand writer and I am building a horse like this — or, more accurately, I’m allowing it to build itself."

"But, in this story, the Trojan Horse is a non-fiction book that I’m writing about the media in Aotearoa — and the warriors are writers. Māori writers, Pasifika writers, French and Chinese and “other” writers. Any writers that haven’t been identified by the press as part of a Pākehā mainstream."

"And the city of Troy is Pākehā culture, which I envisage in this book as a walled fortress. In front of this fortress, the horse is taking shape. There are voices clamouring inside it, about to be let out."

"The voices belong to some of Aotearoa’s foremost writers: Tusiata Avia, Tina Makereti, Chris Tse, Paula Morris, and Karlo Mila, among many others, who I’ve interviewed for my upcoming book, The Outliers: Who do we want to be?"

"My interest in the way these writers are portrayed in the media began * when I started a PhD in creative writing at Victoria University, in 2009. I realised that even though some of them were challenging ethnic stereotypes with their work, they were often completely exoticised in the media around them."

"I discovered that — contrary to what I’d expected — in the 40 years since the publication of Witi Ihimaera’s first book, the mainstream media’s representation of these authors has not become more nuanced, or less racist. Instead, the racism has gone underground, coming out as a kind of simplistic “celebration”, and keeping all such authors firmly on the outside: nice, exotic additions to “New Zealand Literature."

"Those of us who have witnessed the marvellous development of the great motion picture industry, who have perhaps played in our childhood with the strangely named toys, which produced the crude effects of movement of a few printed figures on a short strip of paper, have lived through the most astonishing drama of all that the moving picture world has produced. Its own development to one of the principal industries of the world is a great romance. It is a romance told by thousands of films all over the civilized world; every film is a short chapter in the great story."

"It's a strenuous job every day of your life to live up to the way you look on the screen."

"I guess I became an actress because I didn't want to be myself."