My original idea for this film was to make a documentary, because I loved the real people who told me their stories.

Birds are still very much my hobby

I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate.  I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate—two to one.  It came out of a complicated equation!  Then I thought, “Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?”

I actually did write a novel. I worked on it for five years, and then I shelved it because it was bad.

It’s art that influenced me while I was in exile – Dumile Feni’s work.

I think of two great personalities who were locked up in the prison where we’ve now built the Constitutional Court: Gandhi and Mandela.

And I get so upset when I hear that, because are you saying: Poor people only want a roof over their heads and want food? That poor people are not interested in beauty and rights and fairness and justice?

The one is, to me, the question of conscience is number one. It comes before food. You can survive on almost anything, but your dignity depends on your conscience.

What are we fighting for, if not the right to express our humanity in all its forms, including the sense of fun and capacity for love and tenderness and our appreciation of the beauty of the world?

I look back on it with a sense of achievement at having been part of that tremendous process.