"Africa’s mistake in Sudan" is how African Union peacekeepers, deployed in Sudan’s Darfur region, refer to the operation they are participating in. The correct title of the 7 000-strong peace­keeping mission is African Union Mission in Sudan (Amis), but the negative nickname it has acquired is not inaccurate; Amis has problems.

Modern advertising, like medieval plumbing, owes its continued existence to the fact that people will get used to anything if it happens often enough. There is almost no difference, whether psychological or aesthetic, between having one’s viewing interrupted by a bonbon of venality and having to cross the road to avoid being drenched by a pail of eau d’plague, slung out of a second floor window.

”I was sitting on my bed washing myself in a bucket and I saw this man on TV2 talking about how many millions and millions of rands South Africa has made since Mbeki became our president and I thought: ”Ag kak man, where’s that money? Who gets it? Why am I still living like an animal in a hok [cage]?”