VERBATIM

O“I feel for Julius Malema. I really do. The passion he has for the ANC is deep deep. His last interview on ANC SG [secretary general Ace Magashule] was from the deep ANC heart. It’s going to be OK, homeboy. It will be fine.”

— Finance Minister Tito Mboweni responds on Twitter after Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema’s assertion that removing Magashule would be an “attack from the belly”

O“At some level, you have got to sit back and say it says more about those who make those comments than those who the comments are made about. The journey to a nonracial SA is going to be long and hard because you are going to have people who keep referring to others as experiments and you need to strengthen your resolve.” — Former Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane responds to the party’s former leader, Tony Leon, after he said Maimane was “an experiment gone wrong” in the DA

O“I want to stress that there are complicated ethical and practical issues … raised by the idea of Covid status certification … using vaccination alone. You’ve got to be very careful in how you handle this, and don’t start a system that’s discriminatory.” — United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the issue of Covid-19 vaccine passports

“Let’s just say that I have special O motivation to win the tie and go through to the semifinals. What’s going to happen now isn’t going to change the result of the final in Kyiv. That’s in the past.” — Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah ahead of his side’s quarterfinal clash with Real Madrid in the Uefa Champions League