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NELSON Mandela insisted that people had to be taught to hate. He was right. And those who teach them are often quick to complain at the products of their teaching.

DOES the coalition government mean that the country is in for five years of business-friendly policy which will help the few to prosper while the many are left behind?

IF we want to understand the new government, we will need to look at what politicians do, not what they say – or what they want us to think.

IF what is left of democracy in the United States goes, will that threaten political freedom here and around the world? Probably not. It might even do the opposite.

WOULDN’T this country be a better place if the politicians in the new government ignore their differences and work for the good of the nation? Despite a chorus we hear today, it would not.

IF politicians who call themselves democrats do not hear those who elected them, they should not be surprised when voters threaten democracy by turning their back on them.

The apartheid government’s negotiators in the 1990s must be thrilled that one of their chief ploys is being wheeled out in bargaining over the coalition government –ironically by some of those they then hoped to undermine. In both cases, the aim is to devalue the people’s voice.

SOMETIMES, politicians who are trying to solve their own problems may help us to solve ours. There is a way in which the coalition government might do exactly that.

WHEN IS a coalition not a coalition? When you call it a government of national unity.

THE future of party politics has arrived , brought to us by the past. And its arrival is a call to action for people who want a fairer and freer society.