Graça Machel Quotes

These are the beautiful faces,the brilliant minds and vibrant voices of our daughters, nieces, sisters, whose childhood and innocence we have left unprotected, and these shocking statistics on teenage pregnancy do not even paint an accurate nor comprehensive picture of our shameful disregard for young people we claim to love and cherish.

It is not just fear of a husband that makes a woman bow to these traditions. They are ingrained in her from her upbringing, the women learn to accept as if it's normal.

When you educate a girl, you educate a nation.

Tradition has developed a hierarchy in relationship between men and women that leads to discrimination.

Investing in education from early childhood has a lasting effect on the survival, development, protection and active participation of children in social, economic and political activities.

People say I am powerful but I care more about impactful – in the work I do with children, adolescents, women or even institutions. Those who observe can say, ‘you are powerful,’ but it doesn’t come from me to say I am powerful.

Culture for me is when you sing or dance, when you have theatre, when you read a book, a beautiful poem. It doesn't matter whether it's Shakespeare who wrote it or whether it is an African poet – it is communicating with all of us, regardless of who you are, your colour, your social structure.

To ensure that we achieve the goals for our development by 2063 we need to fully invest in and optimize of the continent’s other half which for too long has been neglected: the African female.

What they have taught me and what I take from their lives is this real ability to go beyond yourself and to dedicate your life to the common good, to create spaces and opportunities for freedom for all.

Education, particularly for girls, is a catalyst for reducing child and maternal deaths and lifting people out of poverty.

A pandemic within a pandemic has been exposed and we are confronted with the horrific reality that millions of women and children — in every country — are fighting for their survival, not just from COVID-19 but from the brutalities of abusers in the prisons of their homes.

We have to change our mindsets, our behaviours, our value system.

Women are not children; they are adults that know what they want to do. They should be recognised with their dignity and to start a business whenever they feel like it.

Tradition has developed into practices which overtime have become beliefs which in essence they put women in a position of inferiority.

The problem is not the consequences of what’s happening, it’s the root causes of why and how we got where we are as a society.”