The taxi driver at Johannesburg airport asks if he can leave his music on. Of course he can.
What is inescapable, as the car meanders through industrial areas and skirts the border of Alexandra, a sprawling township where Nelson Mandela once rented a room, is that all the songs coming through the speakers champion one thing – hope.
You swing around the corner, a stone’s throw away from the visceral poverty harboured within Alexandra, into the financial hub of the city, where trees line the three-lane road and glass-fronted high-rise buildings tower over them. The difference in less than a mile is stark.
