"As rolling blackouts convulsed the city, a South African liberal earnestly explained to me that all this just meant they were ahead of the rest of the world in the energy transition and would soon have a resilient grid." Good Substack essay on S. Africa: thepsmiths.substack.com
Ironically, RW Johnson himself is a casualty of this crumbling infrastructure: in 2009, he injured his foot swimming; infection from the pollution led to amputation. (Lovely chapter in his 2020 memoir about how his friend the novelist Tom Sharpe gave him the will to walk again.)
I wrote my own 5,000-word reflection on the Rainbow Nation for the latest CRB, currently behind the paywall: claremontreviewofbooks.com
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