In South Africa we live near a busy intersection. During the week thousands of cars, trucks, taxis (mini buses) and people-laden bakkies (the local name for utes) scream through on their way to their work destinations. At weekends the ambiance changes completely as an army of vendors, street performers and beggars in wheelchairs descends on this small expanse of asphalt, turning it into a kind of fairground.
There is one group of performers that I have been particularly taken with. These young men dress in white face make-up and baggy trousers reminiscent of the African American Black and White Minstrel acts of mid last century. They have about 120 seconds to catch a driver's attention and elicit a few rands. Soft shoe shuffles or rap are the order of the day. The skill is as remarkable as the cultural and racial ironies of their performance.
This Saturday tableau forms for me a window into the complexity of the fascinating country that is South Africa.
The parallels between my own country and my present adopted one are likewise fascinating. Australia in recent months has continued its angst-ridden debate regarding the arrival of onshore asylum seekers. South Africa, which has around 700,000 registered asylum seekers on its soil, has seen a violent protest against 'foreigners' taking up seasonal work allegedly accepting less money than would normally be paid to nationals.
Australia lately has been arguing the toss for a bill of rights while South Africa, whose history has ensured that rights are never taken for granted, struggles with the difficulties of ensuring access to those rights and values enshrined in what is arguably the most advanced, rights-based national constitution anywhere.
South Africans are enormously and justly proud of their recent history, in overcoming apartheid and introducing a true democratic system of government. The more I see the more I realise the enormity of this achievement.
But the legacy of apartheid remains and manifests itself in huge geographically centred entrenched social disadvantage, the largest income differential anywhere, a 23 per cent official unemployment rate and a lack of basic services such as electricity and water in many isolated communities.
The legacy also manifests itself in the continual battles around corruption and a pervasive, endemic level of violence. High rates of violent crime couple with a mistrust of police and an ambivalent attitude to the rule of law in many sections of the