Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

South Africa’s promise now lives in a cage

Once, every glance, every experience, gave you an aftertaste of guilt. In fairness, most still do

issue 20 February 2016

I went back to see my old house in Cape Town last week, and they’d put a cage around it. Otherwise it was unchanged; broad, plantationish and oddly ill-suited to the slim, cluttered suburban street on which it sat. Yet the whole thing, from the eaves where our little flat was to the porch where we all used to sit and smoke, had been wedged into a box of bars.

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