I HAVE a longstanding acquaintance with a person who lives in a provincial South African town. I do not want to say where it is, for I wish to preserve his anonymity; it is one of those countless towns in rural SA whose population has quadrupled over the last generation as thousands upon thousands of people have left the land.My acquaintance is smart and ambitious, and he is on the up. Five years ago, he had a lowly job in the municipality, his work manual and semi-skilled, his salary a little more than R5,000 a month.Today he is earning triple that. If he plays his cards right, he will become a senior local government manager someday soon, catapulting his family into the upper echelons of the middle class. Were this to happen, it would constitute a revolution in the history of his lineage. His grandparents and great-grandparents were labour tenants on white-owned farms; they owned no property, had few possessions and worked like beasts until they dropped dead.When he knocks off fro...
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