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While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.

Together we have travelled a long road to be where we are today. This has been a road of struggle against colonial and apartheid oppression.

Now, of course, we know there has been an end to apartheid in South Africa, but what excited me was seeing it in the context of history.

My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't really have a function as a useful artist in that anymore.

I didn't actually realise what apartheid meant. I'm probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses.

One can't erase the tremendous burden of apartheid in 10 years, 20 years, I believe, even 30 years.

All of my life had been spent in the shadow of apartheid. And when South Africa went through its extraordinary change in 1994, it was like having spent a lifetime in a boxing ring with an opponent and suddenly finding yourself in that boxing ring with nobody else and realising you've to take the gloves off and get out, and reinvent yourself.

We have got to move away from the concept of race and color because that is what apartheid is. We cannot end apartheid if we retain these concepts.

It may be that apartheid brings such stupendous economic advantages to countries that they would sooner have apartheid than permit its destruction.

I've never doubted that apartheid - because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil - was going to bite the dust eventually.