Could Graca Machal use this opportunity, as a Children's Rights Activist, to corner Mbeki to ask him why the Department of Social Development violates children's rights ..... why they spend so much money on litigation .. why they continually lose supreme court cases on issues of children's rights !! How can SA be hosting this conference for international delegates when we need to be sweeping our own doorstep clean?? It is a disgrace to entertain international delegates, give them a load of nonsense about how well we are handling things when the reality is a completely different story for the majority of the people. The officials who are attending this conference should spend a little time trying to pacify a child who has been abused, abandoned and raped ... who has endured unspeakable horrors ... and then, take the same road as Joe citizen and try to get some help for that child from the very people who have been put in positions to protect them. How sad that power corrupts the soul and hardens the heart!

It's all a parody. Our parliament, impoverished of mind and spirit and integrity, tackling the nation's material poverty problem... which they've been doing for over a decade... and yet poverty is worsening, and quickly. Problems with Eskom and petrol-costs will further entrench poverty, where it has not been before... In the main our parliament and ruling party politicking seems to be driven by collective cover-ups of each others' wrongdoings and hidden agendas (to put it mildly) and the international conferences and policy documents and references to 'ubuntu' are just more window-dressing. More well-connected people will get richer from this conference and its spin-offs, some outspoken people or organisations will be derided... and poverty, crime, abuse, corruption and daily hardships and confusion with or about our government will continue unaffected... Why don't we host an international conference on Crime and Corruption in Governments?