Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka Quotes

This is where you can see that it is really necessary to open up and allow young people to play the role they want to play in providing leadership and solutions in society.

The moral of the story there is that it's important to be involved and be engaged. Being involved also showed to me the importance of having men as part and parcel of the women's struggle.

Well, it was women in the labour movement in the 1900s that gave us this day. They were calling for bread; they were calling for better working conditions and they were calling for peace. Guess what? We are calling for the same things today, in different ways. We are rededicating ourselves to the struggles of today. Today, for instance, we are calling for decent work because women continue to be at the bottom of the pyramid of economic activity and the work and the jobs that they do continue to be informal and to be low paid.

Young people, of whatever time and generation, feel invincible. That's important for necessary change

The women's movement has led the struggle, very bold, very courageous. But the change that is required­– respect for human rights of women– is not just the responsibility of women alone. So we need to mobilize and to involve men.

We don't have a groundswell in a critical mass of countries that have allowed young people to take their rightful place. So something has to change in Africa, so that we do not have so many young people who are so desperate.

We also know that companies that involve women at a high level and engage them fully are much more competitive and profitable. As a matter of fact, amongst Fortune 500 companies, it has been argued that such companies are 34 per cent more competitive than their counterparts when it comes to returning profits to shareholders.

One of my big takeaways from young people is courage. The courage to sometimes walk where no one has ever walked. And I also think young people are not afraid to do the work — it's not as if young people are waiting to be saved. They want to save and deliver on the number of things that they feel strong about. So it is important that as older people, we don't treat them as people we have to carry, they actually will carry us I think.

It is important that women celebrate themselves but also that they don't only preach to the converted and go out there and win more allies for our struggle.

I think that it is important that women grab the opportunities that are there. Young women must stay at school much longer. They must delay having children until they can afford to have and look after them. They must be assertive and not be afraid to talk and to engage, because this world belongs to them just as much as it belongs to men.

We are also calling for women to be given equal pay for work of equal value, but also women still do a lot of unpaid work at home: caring for the aged, caring for children and that means that women cannot go out in the labour market and be part of the formal economy. So we are still, in a way, campaigning for the same thing. Women are campaigning for peace in countries where there is conflict. Women are campaigning against violence against women, which also means that where women have experienced domestic violence at home and outside the home they are not at peace with themselves.

It's important that at a school level, in a comprehensive way, that all young people are prepared for the world of work that they will graduate into. If we do not provide those skills, we risk leaving these young people behind, they will graduate and they will be inadequate for the future that awaits them.

I would hope that at this point in time, our children do not have to die in order to bring about changes.