Yes, we have the judiciary, the Constitution, we're fighting racism on a daily basis, but these are all state efforts and are not the efforts of the individual. The individual has to commit to change, the individual has to look at the past and take accountability of the past; for the wound to heal we have to dress it together.

Working with my friend Sir Antony Sher is truly one of the highlights of my career as an artist.

I had to look at white people as fellow South Africans and fellow partners in building a new South Africa.

In Australia, I almost became a counsellor. At the end of each performance there would be a queue of sobbing people backstage. They all wanted to explain why they left South Africa.

No government can be strong and flourishing while the national character is weak and degraded. A government must flourish and decay with its subjects; and, when a prince makes a law or performs an action which has a tendency to injure the character or prosperity of the nation, he injures himself.

You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties.

What's hard, it seems, is living up to the expectations Democracy imposes upon those who would participate in society.

While American interests in the Middle East must obviously be protected, America's credibility to support democracy for everyone everywhere is crucial.