Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated. Any nation that is progressive is led by people who have had the privilege of studying.

It is not beyond our power to create a world in which all children have access to a good education. Those who do not believe this have small imaginations.

On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education.

The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.

Educating all of our children must be one of our most urgent priorities. We all know that education, more than anything else, improves our chances ofbuilding better lives.