This post has got nothing to do with publishing. A few days ago I drove from my home in Plumstead to a nursery in Constantia. In Gabriel Road in Wynberg, I saw some homeless people lying under a tree, their possessions strewn messily around them.
A metro police car was parked nearby, and a policeman was walking towards them. I slowed down, thinking I was going to witness a miserable arrest scenario, or that he might order them to move on. Instead, he handed them an empty cooldrink bottle which they could exchange for the deposit, and wandered back to his car.
The policeman was African, and the homeless people were ‘coloured’ people, but I don’t really think that matters.
In that simple gesture, I suddenly saw the germ of a new South Africa, made all the better by ways in which we would slightly bend the rules.