A selection of quotes of southern and South African interest appearing in the media over the past week.

  • "They said she had to start looking after herself. She was two." — Investment banker Thabang Skwambane, who will cycle through Africa to raise funds for Aids orphans in his home village, on the situation one girl found herself in.

  • "I know standing in this queue is a huge risk, but it's more risky if I don't have my treatment." — HIV-positive Bongani Mofokeng, a witness to the shooting at Bree Street Taxi Rank in Johannesburg on Monday.

  • "All that we come across is the problem when they are already fighting one another. We only pick it up when it's already affecting innocent people." — Johannesburg metro police spokesperson Edna Mamonyane on police not being approached to intervene on taxi violence.

  • "You never really hear of a taxi owning tycoon." — Jane Barrett, researcher at the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union, on tough competition and tight profit margins in the taxi industry.

  • "The asset has to be sweated to a point where maintenance costs are exorbitant." —Barrett on taxis.

  • "If a person professes his innocence, then why go to all these lengths to prevent the evidence being obtained?" — Durban High Court Judge Jan Hugo, querying Jacob Zuma's advocate Kemp J Kemp on his attempts to stop the State obtaining documents from Mauritius that might relate to arms deal corruption.

  • "We found no tracks, heard no roar, nothing. The possibility that it could have been a brown hyena is bigger." — Tom Mostert, a Free State environment official, on the possibility that a wandering "lion" sighted by herders near Ladybrand may have been a hyena.

  • "The blame must be put at the door of the employer who have dragged negotiations for eight months." — SA Democratic Teachers Union general secretary Thulas Nxesi, blaming the government for a public servants' pay strike that will also shut down schools on Friday.

  • "Negotiations will depend not just on pussy-footing... negotiations can only happen when there's a real offer." — Nxesi.

  • "We are not going to dump patients." — National Education Health and Allied Workers Union provincial secretary Thomas Mamuremi on essential service workers and the strike.

  • "They may be small in number but they are equal with us in respect to the organisation of the movement. We come together jointly to plan and say 'this is how we go forward'." — Congress of SA Trade Unions president Willie Madisha on strike plans with non-Cosatu affiliates.

  • "They (the ministers) will have to switch on their own computers. We are talking about a total shutdown." — Nxesi on the public servants' strike.

  • "It's not easy being dead." — Ntombizodwa Gertrude Blom of Port Elizabeth, whose son Vusumzi received a letter from Dora Nginza Hospital that his mother had died, when she was in fact alive and well at home.

  • "I was so shocked and afraid that she was dead that when I got to her house I shook her until she woke up." — Vusumzi Blom, who found his mother asleep at home.

  • "This is South Africa at its very best. Perhaps the only country in the world where you commit an alleged offence and Home Affairs extends your visa and we expect the police and prosecutors to sort out the problem." — Magistrate Peet van Vuuren, on the State not opposing bail for Mozambican national Zaphanaias Mathe, 80. Mathe was arrested for allegedly smuggling a banned substance in to his son, the notorious re-arrested escapee from Pretoria's C-Max prison. The younger Mathe faces a string of serious charges.

  • "Lucas Zwane, William Makena and William Leshaba, all department inspectors, ran for their dear lives when the employer... allegedly opened fire against them." — Department of Labour spokesperson Zolisa Sigabi, on how a Delmas employer treated three labour inspectors.