CHRIS ROPER: Unmasking the faux revolutionaries

Walking to work in the Cape Town CBD on the one day in the week that I treat myself to a morning in the physical office, I came across a thin, tattered man hunched in the entrance of an empty shop, bleeding from the ear and sucking hopelessly on a shredded joint. When I asked him — stupid question, I know — whether he was OK, he told me to f-off.

I found a city improvement district officer, pointed out the man, and asked him to get medical help. And then I walked on, passing the shuttered restaurants, skirting the occasional miasmas of urine...