Via Language Log, comes this urging from Helen Zille (the leader of the South African Democratic Alliance party):

I want to encourage each and every person in this room to take up a new language, one of our eleven official languages that you do not yet speak. I am working on my Xhosa. Perhaps some of us wish to learn Afrikaans, or Sotho, Tswana, Venda or Zulu. It does not matter whether you have a knack for languages. Simply learning a new tongue opens up a new world and builds bridges. We must do that for each other.

I like it, and hereby resolve to resume my study of Tamil, which I have been neglecting shamefully. link