TOM EATON: A smart city with a bullet train out of poverty is a fantasy to a jobless nation
Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address cried out for a dream of incorruptible police; of new schools staffed by beloved teachers; of new industries opening up to school-leavers
25 June 2019 - 05:08
The news cycle has rolled on but Cyril Ramaphosa’s smart city has stayed with me like the fragments of a fevered dream that linger once the sweat has dried.
In the heat of the moment on Thursday night it felt insulting. For Ramaphosa to fantasise about a technological utopia while his government presides over the industrial-scale destruction of potential and hope seemed to verge on a kind of medieval tone-deafness, the sort where the king orders the serfs to get excited about the new tapestry he’s commissioned for his bedroom.
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