Motlantshe looked up at the TV screen and realised he was seeing downtown Johannesburg. He put the sound up. It was the last thing he needed. There they were, hundreds of men and women doing the toyi-toyi, the rolling protest dance so reminiscent of the heyday of the anti-apartheid era. Except this was today, and Motlantshe was about to sit down with the latest land-hungry investors to tell them South Africa was a safe and stable place to park their millions. He thought about calling the executive director of the SABC but decided it was too early. Since their days as activists he’d known the man didn’t get going till mid-morning.

He’d have to send an email, which Motlantshe loathed, not least because it required a modicum of digital dexterity that was beyond his pudgy fingers. He preferred issuing his instructions over the phone, and when he had to send an email he usually got his personal assistant to key in the message. Facing the prospect of doing it himself only added to his ill-temper.

He navigated his way to the email screen on his phone, something of an achievement in itself, and started to assemble the words. He found it impossible unless he mouthed the letters aloud. He pushed down on the letter a only to see s appear on the screen. He did it again, this time producing @. The more frustrated he got the harder he pressed, making it even more likely that his thumb tip would hit the wrong letter. Eventually, he had what he wanted:

Am in Dubai to see these buyers from London. Worried protest going to upset them. This one is a big deal. The one in Mpumalanga. Keep protest coverage down. Call me. JM.

Motlantshe understood the TV business inside out – after all, he owned a channel – and knew how much other broadcasters depended on footage from SABC. Most – with the exception of BBC World and Al Jazeera – had long since shut down their bureaux in South Africa.

He had a few hours before the meeting with the London delegation. Motlantshe looked at his personalised Richard Mille watch and decided he still had time to make the other call before he was due to meet George Kariakis, the middleman who was organising the meeting. It was going to be a long day and he needed the kind of fillip that only his mistress could provide.

That same morning, some four thousand miles to the south, Kagiso Rapabane had glanced around a single open-plan room, the head office of Soil of Africa in Malelane, an unremarkable town in South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province. Tourists passed through it on their way to the great Kruger National Park, but it was an experience they rarely, if ever, remembered.