Of all Johannesburg’s perils, the one they don’t warn you about is chubbiness. There are alarms, sensors and panic buttons for the house, the car, the office, the garden, but nothing, no siren, no flashing lights, to signal your expanding self.

This week, Bill Gates travelled to a rural clinic in Mozambique to announce the donation of £100-million to fight malaria in Africa and to reaffirm a promise to give away his billions before he dies. The founder of Microsoft is leading the charge in a new era of philanthropy.

The era of evicting indigenous people from ancestral lands to make way for protected nature areas and parks will have to end, conservationists were told last week. Minority communities said they would no longer accept being brushed aside by governments and environmentalists in the name of protecting world heritage sites.