“Next! We’re looking for somebody else.”

“We’d love you to be on the cover of our magazine and we’ll give you a makeover.”

When I was growing up, my mother would accuse me of showing off. That’s the most shaming, humbling, horrible thing. What was I doing? Showing off!

“Oh, he’s all about money.” I’ve never charged anyone in all the years I’ve been doing one-to-one work. That’s my gift to the world.

And actually now having had the advantage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and being able to look at some of the records of what the apartheid government was doing, the thing that is surprising to me is why so many of us survived. I mean, how is it that they did not assassinate more of us?

I used to be “Mister Disinvestment.” Now I would like to be Mister Investment and say, “Come! Come and be part of an exciting, exhilarating process. Come in! Come in on the ground floor and see a people do something that’s probably never happened before, people seeking to become something radically different from what their antecedents would have made us believe they were likely to become.

It is that you know that you are standing out in this crowd because you are being carried on the shoulders of others. You know, you may have the capacity to articulate their aspirations. That is maybe something special you might have. But what is a leader without followers? I mean you would have all of these interviews and people will not — would not necessarily want to follow. No, I am a great believer in the fact that everything is corporate. Everything is corporate and you — as a leader you are one who can coax the best out of others.

But one of the things that my father did was to let me read comics. Now people used to say that’s bad because it isn’t — it spoils your English but, in fact, letting me read — I devoured all kinds of comics — fed my love for English and my love for reading but I suppose if he had been firm I might not have developed this deep love for reading and for English, which stood me in good stead when I later went into hospital for 20 months. I did have something to do. I had — as things maybe got a little bit more serious, I was given a diet — we didn’t have too many books but my father was keen that one read things like Aesop’s Fables and Lamb’s, Tales from Shakespeare . I didn’t read the originals but I read these stories that describe what Shakespeare was saying in the plays and that possibly was something that sharpened your appetite for later.

What is rewarding about the priesthood is, one, that you have an incredible privilege of being privy to some of the most extraordinary things about people. I mean, as their parish priest, you visit people who are sick, say, on their death bed and they tell you things that they probably have not shared with any other person. You are privileged to bring the Holy Sacrament to people at a time when they are probably at their lowest. But you also have the privilege of meeting up with people at their moment of great joy, when they are getting married, or when they have a child baptized.

We received death threats, yes, but you see when you are in a struggle, there are going to have to be casualties, and why should you be exempt? But I often said, “Look, here, God, if I’m doing your work, then you jolly well are going to have to look after me!” And God did God’s stuff.