Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka Quotes

A collection of quotes by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is a prominent South African politician, activist, and feminist leader. Born on November 3, 1955, in Clermont, Durban, she has played a significant role in championing women's rights and gender equality both in her home country and on the international stage.

Mlambo-Ngcuka's political career began in the 1990s when she became a Member of Parliament and served as the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry in Nelson Mandela's government. She later held various government positions, including Minister of Minerals and Energy and Deputy President under President Thabo Mbeki. In these roles, she focused on economic development and empowerment, particularly for marginalized and disadvantaged communities.

Recognizing the persistent challenges faced by women and girls, Mlambo-Ngcuka devoted herself to promoting gender equality globally. In 2013, she was appointed as the Executive Director of UN Women, an agency working to advance women's rights and gender equality across the world. During her tenure, she has been a vocal advocate for ending violence against women, achieving women's economic empowerment, and increasing women's political participation.

Mlambo-Ngcuka has received numerous awards for her exceptional leadership and dedication to advancing women's rights, including the Harvard University Global Trailblazer Award and the Forbes Africa Woman Award. She continues to inspire and empower women by tirelessly fighting for their rights and striving for a more inclusive and gender-equal world.

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in , for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since , but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.

Christopher Hitchens

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