Tintswalo really is South Africa’s story

Tintswalo stepped off the hovercar, which brought her from the Lanseria smart city to the departure station of the Assegai Express – the fastest high-speed train in Africa.

This was called Park Station, she recalled… around about the time President Cyril Ramaphosa recounted the story of her life in his State of the Nation Address in 2024.

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The shiny platforms and plasma displays echoed the pristine outside of the steel and glass terminus, the begging vagrants and knife-wielding robbers long since removed.

Tintswalo was headed to eThekwini – recently voted the world’s cleanest city – for a holiday.

On her return to Ramaphosaville (which used to be Johannesburg), she would board one of SAA’s new supersonic passenger planes for a two-hour trip to Dubai and a little shopping.

Then, she woke up.

It was dark in the house the ANC had built for her family. Load shedding.

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Earlier, this caused her to be late for a job interview (a graduate, thanks to Nsfas, she was still looking for employment three years after finishing varsity).

She would have to try again tomorrow, hoping not to get mugged on the way to the taxi rank.

Ramaphosa was right, she thought bitterly: I am the story of South Africa.