Cape Town

Wednesday

Aidan Hartley

Smashing South Africa’s last relationship taboo

Cape Town As a young FT stringer in Dar es Salaam in the 1980s, I used to hang out with South African guerrillas from rival factions who, instead of waging war against apartheid, spent their energies fighting each other over stolen cars and quaalude-smuggling, or party-ing hard. In our late-night drinking sessions, these Marxist cadres happily taught me, a white son of colonialism, a chant that went: ‘One Settler! One Bullet! SETTLER, SETTLER! BULLET, BULLET!’ It was so hot on those evenings in Dar that we used to take turns climbing into our flat’s chest freezer to cool off for a few minutes. It was quite a thing to see

Thursday

Chloë Ashby

Deep mysteries: Twist, by Colum McCann, reviewed

On the first page of Colum McCann’s compelling novel Twist we meet the two leads: John A. Conway, who has disappeared, and Anthony Fennell, who’s trying to tell his story. They first met when Fennell, an Irish journalist, struggling novelist and occasional playwright, was commissioned by an online magazine to write about the fragile fibre-optic cables that carry information around the world on the ocean floor. Conway, also Irish, an engineer and intrepid freediver, was in joint command of the Georges Lecointe, a ship that spends months at sea repairing the cables when they break. In January 2019 this happened in three places. Fennell hitched a lift with Conway when

Thursday

Sam Kiley

Why do South Africans still support the ANC?

Support for South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, has just fallen below 40 per cent, which makes it very likely that, come the May election, there’ll be a coalition government. I’m surprised that support for the ANC is as high as it is. Across South Africa, states run by the ANC are failing. Infrastructure has collapsed and unrepaired sewage systems mean the water is polluted and poisonous. Electrical systems are down and the railways and ports are often closed. Property prices in Cape Town soar as South Africans flee here from all across the rest of the country. Because South Africa’s rand has collapsed against the euro (and