People identify with me - everyone does - African American women Caucasian women they all identify with me because I'm ethnic.

It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.

I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political I can't do anything about that.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

I was afterwards sorry for this though if I ever travel again I shall trust to none but natives as the climate of Africa is too trying to foreigners.

This is my first opportunity to visit this part of North Africa so I am going to be able to go back home and talk about this beautiful country and encourage Americans to travel here.

I've been lucky to travel through quite a bit of Europe and Australia but I would love to do Asia and South America and South Africa.

Could I say that the reason that I am here today you know from the mouth of the State Department itself is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa.

There are so many things I want to do. Like I want to get an artist a musician a photographer and a bunch of dancers that I know and just travel across Africa and just film it and just see what happens. Do and learn as much as I possibly can. Luckily I have a lot more time.