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If you sit in a position where decisions that you take would have a serious effect on people, you can't ignore a lot of experience around the world which says this drug has these negative effects.

Thabo Mbeki

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Thabo Mbeki
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: June 18
Economist
Politician
South African Politician
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki
World
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People
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More quotes by Thabo Mbeki

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The matter of people being attracted to other countries is a permanent problem in my view, it doesn't only face South Africa. A whole lot of countries in the world are faced with this problem.
Thabo Mbeki
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We would continue to handle our relations with the rest of the Continent with that kind of sensitivity.
Thabo Mbeki
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It's a big problem in South Africa up to this day: many people want to open factories, they want to invest, but then they discover that they don't have the skilled people to employ.
Thabo Mbeki
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For an investor who is sitting in the United States, and South Africa is very far from the United States, you need to go out to that investor to say, these are the possibilities in this particular sector.
Thabo Mbeki
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We are in the process of negotiating an agreement with the United States. We will be negotiating agreements with India and China. We are in the process of negotiating an agreement with Mercosur, South America. So there are a number of these trade agreements in the major markets of the world.
Thabo Mbeki
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You can't abandon people there and say, go and find a job, when you know they are not going to be able to find one, and therefore starve to death. So we have got to address that matter, but we have got to address it systematically.
Thabo Mbeki
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There is a land problem in Zimbabwe, there is a need land for redistribution but it must be handled different, without violence, without conflict, within the context of the law, bearing in mind the interests of all Zimbabweans both black and white. It's necessary that the Zimbabwean government to respond positively to those sorts of messages.
Thabo Mbeki
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That is one of the reasons why we have raised this matter about the need to focus quite sharply on the function of local government, but also on the resourcing of local government. Because it may very well be that we say to local government, you have got to run an indigent policy.
Thabo Mbeki
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I must say, with regard to Equatorial Guinea, the Government of Equatorial Guinea, as soon as they had arrested these people, sent a delegation here to say they are going to charge them because they have got sufficient information to say these people were planning to remove the Government of Equatorial Guinea by force.
Thabo Mbeki
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I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.
Thabo Mbeki
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If we only said safe sex, use a condom, we won't stop the spread of AIDS in this country.
Thabo Mbeki
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Our troops are in Burundi. We were requested by African countries who said, look, the United Nations is not moving on this matter, can you people deploy people, so we can move Burundi forward.
Thabo Mbeki
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I am sure that it wouldn’t be in the long-term interests of China which would continue to depend on these African resources for a very long time to see the emergence of any sense of hostility animosity, tension, da da da, between itself and the African continent.
Thabo Mbeki
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I know there is a lot of concern I know about plans that Iran might have to develop nuclear weapons which arises from positions that Iran took in the past when in fact it did not disclose things to the IAEA… because they were hiding something. I can understand that.
Thabo Mbeki
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A matter that seems to be very clear in terms of the alternative view, is what do you expect to happen in Africa with regard to immune systems, where people are poor, subject to repeat infections and all of that. Surely you would expect their immune systems to collapse.
Thabo Mbeki
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It is quite easy to understand what China would need from the African continent with regards to its own economy, raw materials, oil and a market for manufactured goods. As I say it is not difficulty to understand and perfectly legitimate. There is nothing wrong with that.
Thabo Mbeki
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I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew.
Thabo Mbeki
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Does HIV cause AIDS? Can a virus cause a syndrome? How? It can't, because a syndrome is a group of diseases resulting from acquired immune deficiency.
Thabo Mbeki
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I come back to what I had said earlier: the policies might be there but are people benefiting from the policies? You do find that in many instances, though the policies exist, they are not having the necessary impact. That is a particular challenge in local government, because that is where all the services get delivered.
Thabo Mbeki
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We are very keen to see that nobody gets ill-treated or abused.
Thabo Mbeki