WE’VE decided it’s best to have a recorded version of the anthem play in the background, but there will be a band on the field, and possibly even a choir, for the Italian anthem. – The Springbok team’s spokeswoman Annelee Murray on how it would handle the Italy-South Africa match after the Ras Dumisani fiasco, quoted in The Star

I SAW a light flash the sky at about 8pm, at first I thought I was imagining it, but my friend also saw it... Maybe it’s people getting abducted by aliens... I walked in the house looked out [and] the sky was lit. It looked how it normally [does] at 5am. – An entry on mybroadband.co.za on a meteor spotted over South Africa

I SUSPECT that comrade [ANCYL leader Julius] Malema and others are missing this bigger systemic picture because when they speak of mineral beneficiation they are thinking of bling... sorry, jewellery. – SACP general secretary Jeremy Cronin criticising Malema’s calls for the nationalisation of mines

[I] DO not need the permission of white political messiahs to think. – Malema to Cronin

THE YCLSA [Young Communist League of South Africa] believes that Malema has sunk to the lowest ebb of being racist and hurling insults, instead of engaging with profound debates that Cronin was raising. – YCLSA spokeswoman Gugu Ndima

I DO not qualify to be a racist. I am incapable of being a racist. – Malema quoted in the Sowetan

WE have been doing this for years. Our forefathers also did it. Why should we stop now? White people must stop interfering in our culture. – A supporter of the Ukweshwama ritual, Petros Zondi, during which men kill a bull with their bare hands
MY daughter pleaded as she held on to the rails. She begged that they spare her life and she held on for dear life. But she was kicked, booted, so that she had to let go. – Jeewan Seevnarian, the father of Kavisha Seevnarian, who survived after being thrown 60 metres off a bridge by hijackers

WE (South Africa) keep being told that we have the cheapest electricity in the world and this is not the case. Let’s start calling Eskom’s prices the most expensive in the world and change the public’s mindset. – Economist Mike Schussler

WE knew the flak we would be getting... but we felt we were in a position if we could get [all the allegations against Selebi] corroborated. If this is true, it is a risk or gamble worth taking. – Former prosecutions boss Vusi Pikoli on indemnity deals the state made to prosecute former police commissioner Jackie Selebi

WE are here to assist in his mounting up to heaven. – Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu on French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s promise to give the Tutu HIV Foundation money for its fight against the disease

From the history books
MAN is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue. – US playwright Eugene O’Neill in his play ‘The Great God Brown’. O’Neill, who in 1936 became the first American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, died on November 27, 1953

I REFUSE to admit that I am more than 52, even if that makes my children illegitimate. – Nancy Astor. On November 28, 1919, Astor was elected as the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons

I’M a tidy sort of bloke. I don’t like chaos. I kept records in the record rack, tea in the tea caddy, and pot in the pot box. – Former Beatle George Harrison, who made his solo mark after the band’s break-up with the hit single ‘My Sweet Lord’, died of cancer on November 29, 2001