Mma Ramotswe decided to go back into her office. There was a curious thing about male conversation that she had noticed - men often ended up poking fun at one another. Women did this only rarely, but men seemed to love insulting one another. It was very strange.

She looked down. He had clasped his hands together, his fingers interlaced. It was a gesture, she thought, of unequivocal pleasure--pleasure at hearing what all of us wanted to hear at least occasionally: that there was somebody who liked us, whatever our faults, and liked us sufficiently to say so.

we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing.

The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometimes foolish, like people anywhere, but they did not bear grudges, as Mr Mandela had shown the world.