FRED KHUMALO: How SA could rock
Vilakazi Street was buzzing even though it was in the middle of the week. If only its entrepreneurial spirit could be replicated all over the country
When I first met Tim Harper during a sojourn in the US in 2011 he vowed (like many Americans I met back then) to give me a tinkle the moment he landed in Johannesburg — "Because Africa is definitely on my bucket list, brother, you can take that to the bank." In the ensuing years I have hosted three families I met during that time. When these friends announced themselves on landing in Johannesburg, I was not surprised — the level of intimacy was deep, cultivated over a year in which we were all on the same academic programme at Harvard. With Tim it was different. I met him at a pub. Plastered out of his mind, he insisted on buying me two double-whisky sodas. Though I was grateful for the drinks (booze is expensive in the US) — I was not sure I wanted to be friends with him. A blue-collar fellow from the Irish part of Boston, he punctuates every sentence with a four-letter word. The scars on his face tell a thousand tales. We bumped into each other again a week later, at a jazz show. ...
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