All of my life had been spent in the shadow of apartheid. And when South Africa went through its extraordinary change in 1994, it was like having spent a lifetime in a boxing ring with an opponent and suddenly finding yourself in that boxing ring with nobody else and realising you've to take the gloves off and get out, and reinvent yourself.

For most of my writing life, I’ve refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.

A very close friend of mine keeps reminding me that since about the age of 50, I’ve been saying, ‘I’m finished. I haven’t got another one in me.’ But somehow you do.

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people’s mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

I’m always in disguise in one form or another in my plays.

The clocks are ticking my friends. History has got a strict timetable. If we’re not careful we might be remembered as the country who arrived to late.

Without white South Africa realizing what it had done – and on the basis of that realization having the courage to ask for forgiveness – there can really be no significant movement.

For you in the West to hear the phrase ‘All men are created equal’ is to draw a yawn. For us, it’s a miracle. We’re starting out at rock bottom, man. But South Africa does have soul.

From early on there were two things that filled my life – music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.

Night-time is when I brainstorm; last thing, when the family’s asleep and I’m alone, I think about the next day’s writing and plan a strategy for my assault on the blank page.