The police helicopter clattered in a winter-blue sky, circling above Regina Mundi church in Soweto. Its rotor blades chopped the air with all the finesse of a carpet beater. In the old days its appearance in the sky would have sown resentment among the famously resilient people below; now they looked up with an indifference that spoke volumes for the transformation that had taken place in the country. There was a far more interesting spectacle on the ground. This old church of protest, its perimeter wall and grounds hurriedly spruced up for the occasion, was the focus of a national event. From the air, the long line of shiny limousines being marshalled around it by the police looked like a brash silver and black necklace placed inappropriately around the shoulders of an ageing and much-loved aunt.

Josiah Motlantshe had chosen Regina Mundi for the funeral of his son, Lesedi, even before he had returned to Johannesburg. It was a theatrical choice in keeping with the smoke-and-mirrors world in which South Africa’s new elite continued to claim a fellowship with the thousands who had longed for freedom, even if the gap between them and the rest of the country was now every bit as wide as it had been between blacks and whites. They fooled no one except, perhaps, themselves.

As each VIP party arrived outside the main gate, a minder jumped out and held open the back door of a limousine. Its occupants eased themselves out in the practised way of those who’ve long ago done away with the need to open their own doors, buttoning a jacket or adjusting a shawl in one fluid movement. Dark sunglasses were de rigueur, as if to suggest that underneath their eyes were puffy with grief.

A former head of the ANC military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, now a major shareholder in an Indian-owned hotel chain, stuck his fist into the air, but only briefly, reminding himself that the days when funerals inevitably turned into political rallies were fading. This was a new world. There were carefully subdued greetings between mourners, the usual raucous exchanges replaced by mutually reinforced expressions of sadness: the Motlantshes’ loss was their loss too. The provincial premier lingered rather longer outside the gate than was necessary, studiously alert to the whereabouts of several camera crews that were darting, like pollinating bees, from one group to another. He had wanted to be there when the presidential party arrived (hence the full-on security in the air and on the ground) but was ushered in by one of the officials.