WINNIE MANDELA

Together, hand in hand, with our matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.

I wanted to be a doctor at some point, and I was always bringing home strays from school: people who were too poor to pay fees or have food. My parents never rebuked me or told me that they were hard-pressed, too.

My continent knows more about me than I do myself.

I don't say we should have performed miracles, but surely there ought to have been a difference between the apartheid regime and governance of the ANC after 17 years.

It is any wife's dream to lead a normal life with her family.

There is nothing the government has not done to me. There isn't any pain I haven't known.

The solution of this country's problems lies in black hands.

This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family.

I don't want a grand villa in a rich suburb alongside white people where many of my former comrades choose to live. I would never betray my roots in that way.

I was so hooked by the fight for freedom that nothing mattered to us so long as we fulfilled the dream of years and years of our people being liberated. I thought normal life would come the day after.

We shall liberate our country.

As much as the South African racist regime is prepared to fight to the last man, so are we determined to fight to the bitter end.

Nelson was locked up on Robben Island, and wives like me had been warned we would bring our husbands home as corpses from that place. But I always believed he would be released. It was my duty to have a home ready for us.

The government can become so elitist and concentrate on elitist interests. To help the government, you must constantly hold its attention.

I am not the sort of person to carry beautiful flowers and be an ornament to everyone.

I never talk about my private life.

To me, David Astor was a freedom fighter. To me, he wasn't just a journalist; he was a freedom fighter.

The brutality of apartheid drains you of that emotion of fear if you have gone through everything you can be put through in the process of harassment.

You build dreams, you build castles in the air, and you hope that at least part of that will be realized, even under apartheid.

Politicians are not lovers.

I am a living symbol of the white man's fear. I never realized how deeply embedded this fear is until I came to Brandfort.

I'm not ashamed of anything I've ever done in the name of fairness and justice for my people.

Those 18 months in solitary confinement... bruised my soul. If I had had a weapon, I would have fought my way out.

You all must realize that Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others - hundreds who languished in prison and died. Many unsung and unknown heroes of the struggle.

I believe in myself and the justice I've fought for all my life.