Outside of the oppressive nature that the South offered to the black people, black gay people, black gay people who happened to be Christian, who wouldn't want to leave? I couldn't wait to get out of there.
I started as an engineer. I migrated to philosophy and international politics. And I did my studies about African - Africa democracy and democratization in Africa, taking Kenya as a model. And then, while I was doing so in 1996 in South Africa, Al Jazeera was established. So they requested me to be an analyst on African affairs.
I'll never forget working to get my college, Wayne State University, to divest from the government in South Africa. This was the beginning of my activism, and the fight for social and economic justice has been a constant thread in my life.
Folks who are getting their strokes in the South are not as unhappy with Howard Dean. You don't see anybody starting any movement to get him out of office.
I've never been invited to do an exhibition or do a talk in England, except once, about 10 years ago. I've given talks all across Canada, many in the United States, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan - but not England.
The global phenomenon of poverty tourism - or 'poorism' - has become increasingly popular during the past few years. Tourists pay to be guided through the favelas of Brazil and the shantytowns of South Africa. The recently opened Los Angeles Gang Tour carries visitors through battle-scarred territories of urban violence and deprivation.
I travel all the time, but when I come back to the South, I see such progress. In a real sense, a great deal of the South has been redeemed. People feel freer, more complete, more whole, because of what happened in the movement.
You know, I love the South.
These days, the manufacturing is controlled by a small number of countries, primarily Taiwan and South Korea.
Second only to the sea, the Miami sky has been the greatest comfort in my life past 50. On a good day, when the wind blows from the south, the light here is diffuse and forgiving.
As a South African, the idea of turkey was new to me. And confusing. It's about the least flavorful bird on the planet.
I started collecting aerial photographs of Native American and South Pacific architecture; only the African ones were fractal. And if you think about it, all these different societies have different geometric design themes that they use. So Native Americans use a combination of circular symmetry and fourfold symmetry.
I am no fashion diva - I grew up on the beaches in South Africa and am a nature girl that spends a lot of time outdoors. Fashion speaks to me through an occasion.
I roll with bodyguards when I go back home to South Africa.
There's the assumption being made by the national security advisers to the Obama administration that the North Korean leadership is not suicidal, that they know they will be obliterated if they attacked the United States. But I would point that everything in South Korea and Japan is well within range of what they might want to do.
Sometimes I say in France: Europe is no more the center of the world - and the United States, neither. We have other key players on the international stage: China, of course; but also Brazil, India and South Africa. And their influence is very, very strong.
In South Africa, where HIV-positive children are often shunned, we have an HIV-positive Muppet to teach children to be friendly with children with HIV. But they use local actors. And it's not always a street. Sometimes it's 'Sesame Plaza,' or 'Sesame Tree.'
Since before the Civil War, crosses have indeed garnished veterans' memorials from the North to the South, from Arlington to Normandy, and from the South Pacific to the Middle East.
I grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina, in a six-room farmhouse with a couple of leaning posts to keep it from fallin'. I came up in a time when men were men.
Historians and journalists always have agendas, but if I want to find out what's going on in South Africa, I read Nadine Gordimer or John Coetzee because they offer novelistic truth.
I started off as a graffiti artist in the South Bronx. My tag name was 'Loco' because I would go crazy and tag anywhere I wanted, in the weirdest places.
I grew up on a council estate in south London; my dad was a bus driver and my mum sewed clothes to bring in extra money. My parents worked hard and were able to save up and buy a home for our family.
Israel will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel left there.
In addition to public housing, South Williamsburg is home to shabby artists' lofts like mine, apartments of Hasidic Jews, and one extremely tall, high-priced condo.
The best place for puffin watching is Sumburgh Head, at the south end of the Shetland mainland. There used to be a lighthouse there, but it's now a visitor centre and gallery; they run a webcam, so you can check on the puffins in advance.
A lot of my music is very roots-oriented, and that's country and soul. I've been in every roadhouse in the South, soaking in all of that... Nashville is like a second home to me, and I'm just gravitating toward the songs.
My ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War; I was raised in Natchez, Miss.; I performed in the Confederate Pageant for a decade; I dug ditches and loaded trucks with black men who taught me more than any book ever could; and I graduated from Ole Miss. Anyone who survived that is a de facto expert on the South.
'A Just Defiance' has been a huge success in South Africa. While reading at times like a well-written thriller, its significance is to reveal apartheid to have been far more brutal, ruthless, and self-serving even than we had suspected.
My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.
When I am in that lane, and I hear, 'Caster Semenya from South Africa,' I always know I am doing it for my people. They love and support me, and I will always do them proud; I will always put them first. Without them, I am nothing.
South Sydney is a very complicated and wonderful place. You have some of the most expensive bits of real estate in the country and a large percentage of government housing.
South America's most populous country, Brazil, is also emerging as one of the region's most social-media savvy.
It's one thing to be writing in South or Latin America, where, except for Brazil, every country, however small and hard to find on a map, speaks Spanish, but quite another to be writing in, say, Hungary, a landlocked nation of 10 million people, with a language that very few people outside Hungary can read or speak.
The Marines in Korea never feared 'friendly fire' or artillery coming from the South Koreans - from their allies - like they did later in Vietnam, fighting with the South Vietnamese. The Koreans could be trusted.
I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.
I moved to New Zealand from Winnipeg when I was almost five. I hated it. It was to a city in the south of New Zealand called Invercargill and there was constant rain. There was a depressing sensation in the air.
