The Burning Violin

  There are few things more enlightening than returning to a city you once called home, particularly when that city has spent the better part of three decades being described as either the greatest place on Earth or a civilisation teetering on the brink of collapse. London, apparently, is both. According to the steady stream of news, social media commentary and WhatsApp wisdom that reaches us in South Africa, Britain has become a crime-ridden, immigrant-overrun, economically crippled disaster zone where nobody can afford to live and civilisation is hanging on by its fingernails. Naturally, I was curious; and a little afraid! Having lived in London in 1999 and 2000, and returned several times since, I recently spent two weeks reacquainting myself with the old girl. My last visit was eight years ago, so I was expecting a few changes. What I wasn't expecting was to find a city that, in many respects, looks and feels better than I can ever remember. Although, as I soon disc...

  There are few phrases more South African than: “Don’t worry, we’ll make a plan.” Car won’t start? We’ll make a plan. Power’s off? Make a plan. Water’s off? Make another plan. Pothole swallowed the left front wheel? Someone knows a guy. It is one of the things I love most about South Africans. We are resourceful, adaptable and almost pathologically unwilling to be defeated by circumstances. Give us a problem and, before most countries have established a commission of inquiry, someone in Boksburg has built a solution out of two extension leads, a pool pump and something he found in the garage. It’s magnificent. But lately I’ve started wondering whether our remarkable ability to make a plan has also become part of the problem. Because if citizens continually find ways around dysfunction, what incentive is there to fix the dysfunction in the first place? The Country of Plan B South Africans don't really have backup plans anymore. We have backup lifestyles . Electricity unreliable? So...