Johannesburg is a city that hides its beauty well, and sometimes, you can’t see the trees for the cell-masts. But keep looking, within as well as without, and the beauty of Johannesburg will find you

Driving back from the airport late one night, my luggage still infused with the tang of the Atlantic breeze, I catch sight of a strange purple glow on the freeway up ahead.

I lift my foot off the petrol a little, and the other cars bullet past me, their brights blazing.

As I get closer, by a trick of the light, the methylated hue shifts to sapphire, illuminating the filigree of the girders that span the tarmac of the N1 near the William Nicol off-ramp.

I have just slipped beneath one of the new Gauteng toll gantries, and the sight of it, pooling in reflections on my windscreen, has taken my breath away.

By day it will take my money, sending out an impulse that will hold my voyage to ransom, unless I take the slip-roads to avoid the back-roads where the Metro constabulary stand in wait.

But this is Johannesburg, where we take our beauty as we find it, even in the industrial floodlighting of a monument to highway robbery.

I began thinking about this, about the secret poetry of the Joburg cityscape, in the metallic afterglow of a summer thundershower, as I edged out of my driveway, the security-gate rattling on its rail, my eyes on the rear-view, my fingers tight around the wheel.

Then I saw the beads of rain, clinging to the electric fence, like dots of music on a staff. It was a picture as pretty as a haiku, and I was smitten by the way a little moment can light up a life in a city as big as ours.

But it is not just the finer details that give Johannesburgers reason to be Johannesburgers.

If you zoom out to the Google Earth eye-view, you will see, as we like to tell our visitors, that we live in the largest urban forest on the planet.

What we don’t tell our visitors is that many of those trees, the towering pines and the graceful palms, are actually Vodacom cell-masts, topped by cherry-lights to keep the birds and planes at bay.

Or that the others, made of actual wood, were planted not to green the dry and dusty klip-veld, but to harvest the timber to hold up the tunnels where men slithered on their bellies to hunt for gold.

We are, by nature, unsentimental about nature here in Johannesburg.

You will not find a park in Hyde Park, and nor will you find a place to park in Hyde Park on a Saturday morning.

I can’t recall seeing much of a park in Parktown or Parkhurst or Parkview either, although the roads that link them all lead at some point to the big road that bypasses the sanctuary where we keep our wild animals safe from ourselves.

Whenever I drive down Jan Smuts, and I catch a glimpse of a zebra or an eland or a wildebeest behind the high walls and wire, I think to myself, I’d better put my foot down before that robot changes from orange to red. And then I do.

Johannesburg breeds in its citizens a Darwinism of the heart, an instinct for self-preservation that manifests in our drive to get ahead, in the queue, in the organogram, on the hard shoulder.

But beneath those layers of Kevlar and steel, beneath the hooting and the shouting, we are all heart, bonded in spirit and deed by our shared sense of belonging.

The invisible landmarks of the Highveld are the summer thunderstorms that brew and rage at the close of a mercilessly hot day, furrowing the sky with heavy cloud, hurling assegai-bolts of lightning from the heavens.

Then the warm rain falls, slaking the soil, and we all drive a little faster to get home in time to see the benediction of the rainbow.

We don’t have mountains in Joburg. We have toxic dumps where the golden sand is stained with acid, and slender trees struggle to put down roots.

We don’t have oceans in Joburg. We have parking lots. We don’t have rivers. We have spruits that trickle past the pylons and the concrete pipes.

And yet, every time I have been away, and I see the skyline of Johannesburg in the distance, the lump in the throat of the Hillbrow Tower, the needle of the Brixton Tower pointing to the sky, the light falling on the glass spires, the whips of the brakelights and headlamps on the freeway underpass, my hardened heart skips a beat.

Not because of those buildings and machines and the people within and around them, but because of what they mean.

The ultimate destination, the city of my heart and soul. Home.

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As the lights dim on the last drive-in theatre in Johannesburg, the allure of the al fresco screen lives on in memory

The crescent moon was hanging in the sky like an apostrophe, and above it shone the asterisk of the evening star.

The night was punctuated with the promise of adventure and romance, as we pulled up at the gateway of the Velskoen, handed our toll to the man in the booth, and blazed a trail across the rolling waves of tar.

The lamps of our galleon rose and fell, illuminating the wayfarers as they set up camp, unfolding canvas chairs, hefting baskets of provisions, spreading picnic blankets on the ground.

The word had got out. The last drive-in theatre in Johannesburg would be closing soon, cleared to make way for an office park. And suddenly, the place was full.

In the flood of lights, sweeping along the potholed alleys, my childhood memories came flooding back: how we would button up our pyjamas and clamber into the back of the station-wagon, hiding tjoep-stil in the well between the seats when we got to the box-office, then running to play on the slide and swings beneath the towering silver screen before the night got dark enough to watch a movie by.

One night, in the rush to beat the exodus at the end of the second feature, my dad forgot that the speaker was still inside the car, and we pulled off with a clamour of metal as the twirly cable pulled taut, halting us in our tracks and rousing me from a dream of gunshots and galloping hooves.

But tonight, there were no speakers attached to the little hitching-posts at the drive-in.

You simply had to tune your car-radio to the correct FM frequency, and adjust the volume to your liking.

“Too loud, too loud!” yelled Rachel, sitting in the boot with her friend, Stephanie, the door angled in salute to the last glowing embers of twilight.

There was still time to trek to the cafeteria before the trailers started, so we set off over hill and dale, towards the buzzing scribble of neon.

On the way, we saw a troop of children perched on the roof of a car, their legs a-dangle over the windscreen, as they jostled for the best spot to watch the main attraction.

A little further along, we saw a man stoking the coals of a portable braai, the spiral of boerewors sending a wisp of smoke into the sultry air.

There was a tremor of bass in the sky, and a silent flicker of lightning beyond the looming screen. The moon slipped into a pocket of cloud, and it was dark.

“Hurry,” I said, as the girls stood in line for their popcorn and candy-floss.

The show was starting without us: I could see people mouthing at each other on the screen, their voices a muffle of soundtrack caged within the cars.

One night, long ago, I got lost on the way back from the cafeteria, my arms piled high with food, wandering up and down the rows, squinting at numberplates, peering through windows. Tonight, we had our cellphones.

We found the way back to our mooring, and the children sat in the boot with their pillows and duvets, rolling their eyes at reminders not to spill popcorn all over the place.

The grown-ups sat on their camping chairs, al fresco, wondering whether it would rain and whether the car battery would be okay with the radio on all night.

Here and there, an engine roared into life, idled, and then shut down. Someone flicked their lights, washing the colours from the screen, and someone else flicked their lights to tell them to flick their lights off.

I watched the movie for a while, and then my eyes wandered to the stars and the clouds, and I followed the blip of a red light drifting across the sky.

The Top Star, the Starlight, the Hillfox, the Velskoen, the 5-Star, the Willows.

Soon, the drive-ins, with their double-features and cafeterias and their canvasses radiant with giant figures in the night, will be history. But they will always play on in our memory, like a movie.

*This also appears in the April edition of Your Family magazine

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*In 1995, I was commissioned by Style Magazine to write a profile of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Then, as now, he was a busy man, besieged by visitors from abroad and requests from the media. I was told he wouldn't be able to fit me into his schedule for months to come. Then his Press Secretary, John Allen, said, "Why don't you just come to Cape Town for the day, and hang out with the Arch?" So that's what I did. And here is the story.

It’s teatime in the library at Bishopscourt. Beyond the wide-open patio doors, the garden is alive with colour and birdsong, and the summit of the mountain is untroubled by cloud.

It is a beautiful new South African day. The Archbishop is in his place, and all is well with the world.

He sips his drink - Milo, with ice, in a tall glass - and he rests it on the tea-trolley, his every gesture  captured on video and film by the cameras that obscure the faces of the Presbyterian  peacemaking delegation from America.

He points to photographs of his predecessors and tells them a story about the bishop, the archbishop and the Very Big Dog.

His ebony crucifix bounces on his chest as he mimes the collapsing of the archbishop's deckchair,  the leaping of the hound on the cassock, the frantic  maid rushing in to call for help.

As he reaches  the punchline - "And the bishop said: 'I'm glad'" - his voice descends to a sonorous  timbre, and the room swells with raucous laughter and the sound of Presbyterians steadying  their teacups.

The archbishop lets it ride for a moment, and then he points to the portrait of another of his forerunners.

This  time, the story is of courage and fortitude in the face of impending death. The room falls silent.

He plays the mood like a violinist, sweeping up the scale to a lilting crescendo of hope and resurrection, ending on his three favourite words: "Wonderful,  wonderful,  wonderful."

At that moment, everyone in the  room is in love with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or at least in awe of his infinite capacity to solicit adoration.

He claps his hands and ushers the delegation into the dining-room, where they will talk about peace and truth and justice.

I have been following in the footsteps of Desmond Tutu since early this morning.

At the unholy hour of 5.30am, I drove up the winding,  leafy lanes of Bishopscourt, dodging   squirrels and joggers and old men walking their dogs.

But all I could see, in a mind's-eye montage of fleeting images from television, newspapers and authorised biographies, was the Nobel Peace Prize laureate,  the icon of the anti-Apartheid struggle,  the purple­clad prophet of the Rainbow Nation: Tutu.

Tutu forcing his way through  an angry mob to save a black policeman from the necklace.

Tutu clambering into the back of a Casspir, a police dog snapping at his heels. Tutu lifting his cassock and toyi-toyiing on April 27, 1994.

Tutu spreading goodwill in a township street, wearing a fisher­man's cap and a custom-made T-shirt: "Just Call Me Arch".

Tutu, alone in the moonlight  in a faraway English parish, dancing like a dervish with the unbridled  joy of Christmas. But it's a little early for that.

John Allen, the archbishop's media secretary, who used to pound the religious affairs beat on The Star, leads the way down  a carpeted  corridor  lined  with awards  and citations and momentoes of photo opportunities.

Apart from the grinding, clunking rhythm of heavy machinery, it's as quiet as a cathedral  in here.

Allen peers around a doorway, nods, and makes a suggestion. "Say, 'Hi.' "

It is the archbishop. He raises a hand and says: "Hi."

He is striding very briskly in his tracksuit and Reeboks, brow lightly varnished with sweat, going nowhere fast on a Trojan treadmill exercise  machine. It is the price he has to pay for being Tutu.

Not too long ago, he felt free to walk with God on  the  pavement  outside  the  security  gate.  Now  it's  30 minutes on the treadmill every morning. Still, he remains blissfully oblivious  to distraction.

His eyes are fixed on the infinite, his  lips move in silent conversation. He's not talking to himself.

The day will begin with a Eucharist service at St George's Cathedral  in Cape Town.  There  will be a staff  meeting to discuss pastoral  matters.

On the way back to Bishopscourt, he will record a short Christmas message at Tape Aids for the Blind.

He has three  media interviews lined up for the day: two television, one print. He will entertain  the Presby­terians and see a couple of parishioners.

In the evening, he will answer  questions  from  the nation  on Microphone-In with Nigel Murphy.

Things are not working out as planned. When he raised Nelson Mandela's hand on the balcony at the Grand Parade, like a referee announcing  the champ, the idea was that Tutu, leader by default during the power vacuum of the Struggle, would disappear quietly into the purple band of the South African spectrum. He would become a pastor.

Trouble  is, the transition was a miracle. Everyone knows that. No-one knows why.

So the archbishop  has had a lot of explaining  to do, on an increasing  number  of public plat­forms at home and abroad.

But he is a man of the cloth. He bears his burden with  grace. "I am loved," he once explained,  "therefore I am."

Loaded  with papers  and  passages from Scripture,  the archbishop  slides into the back seat of the Camry as John Allen starts the engine.

The journey  to town, in peak-hour traffic, will take about 25 minutes. Perhaps there will be time for small talk. Perhaps  not.

We take a left onto the M3, easing into the citybound flow. "I take my life in my hands continually," says the archbishop,  quoting from his  daily  text.

"Yet I do not forget Your law. The wicked have laid a snare for me, yet I have not strayed from Your precepts. Your commands  are the joy of my heart."

The archbishop  slips off a patent-leather shoe  and extends a red-socked foot towards the gear-lever, almost touching  Allen's pin-striped  shirt.

"I loathe those who are double-minded, and Your law do I love. You are my shelter and my shield.  All the ungodly  of the earth  You count as dross. My flesh shrinks from fear of You."

I catch sight of the archbishop  in the side-view  mirror. A small, grey-haired man in  a purple  cassock,  cloaked  in solemn meditation. It is a jolt.

The secular world slips by the window: minibuses, trucks, police cars, billboards advertising timeshare  on Devil's Peak.

"And  now, you priests, this decree  is for you. Unless  you listen to Me, unless  you pay heed to the honouring  of My name, says the Lord of Hosts, I shall lay a curse on you, I shall cut off your arms, fling offal in your faces. I shall banish  you from My presence."

It is 7.45am. It's impossible to find parking in this town. Even the reserved spot in the courtyard of St George's Cathedral  is taken.

Tutu hops wordlessly  out of the car and disappears  into the mouth of the church. He swaps his purple cassock  for green. Eucharist.

He swallows the last of the communion  wine, the inside of the chalice shining silvery light on his face.

He pauses, rests  his elbow  on the pulpit  and  contemplates his small congregation of ecclesiastical staff. A sermon is optional  at this point.

Instead,  he says to them: "Hello. You look fine to me." Something about  the archbishop's timing  and delivery makes me want to burst out laughing,  but I check  myself. This is a church.

Later, on Microphone-In, Tutu takes a call from  a  man  who  is opposed  to  affirmative action.  Tutu concedes his point, but chides him for the sexism inherent in his belief that the best man should  get the job.

"Ja," says the caller, lapsing into platitude, "I always say that behind every good man is a good woman."

Tutu doesn't miss a beat. "No," he says, shrill as a bird, shoulders shaking with  mirth.  "Behind   every  good man  is  a  woman  with nothing to wear."

This  is  crazy.  Now  we're  parked  in. And so is the archbishop.

At every  step he takes from  the cathedral,  his path is blocked by someone else who wants a minute of his time, to hug, to shake hands, to greet, to implore, to deliver tidings.

People surround him in clusters, and his laughter peals through the courtyard.

A visiting theologian  from Germany, watching from the shade of a jacaranda tree, tells me he is horrified by the sight.

But the archbishop has a simple  approach  to such matters. "God, I am doing your work. It is jolly well your business to look after me."

Finally, like the Red Sea, cars give way, and we head for Bishopscourt via Tape  Aids  for  the  Blind, where the archbishop will pre-record his Christmas message.

Sitting  in the glass  booth  after  a royal  reception  and a quick-as-a-flash photo opportunity,  Tutu  obliges  the engi­neer with a sound check -"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I'm sitting in my chair and hoping for Heaven" - and lays down  his homily in one take, without notes.

Bethlehem,  he says,  is God's graffiti  for the world: "I just want to say I love you."

Politely  declining  tea, Tutu bestows  benedictions in triplicate on his way out.

"God  bless you, God bless  you, God bless you. Good morning and bye-bye."

At Bishopscourt, someone  asks him  how  he is feeling. He lifts  his purple skullcap and pats his bald spot. "Moeg," he says, turning the word  into  a wounded  bellow. But the limelight  enervates him. Maybe  too much.

He is sitting on a chair in the shade of a bottlebrush  tree when the cameraman  from the BBC whoomphs a white light onto  his face. Tutu recoils.

The  programme is Songs of Praise , but he feels more like a suspect in a police interrogation room.

The producer, sitting opposite, pops her head into a black  bag, checking  the image on the monitor.  She offers a technical  explanation.

"Unfortunately, the light is necessary. Otherwise you'll look very dark."

She attempts to embellish the point. Too late. Tutu almost falls off the chair with giggling.

"But I am very dark! And very hot. Are you trying to prepare me for the other  place?''

The  light is dimmed, leaving  just a glow of neon on Tutu's face, and red on the producer's. She fires away.

"What does Advent  mean to you, personally?"

Every word trips from Tutu's tongue with relish.

"Preparation  for the birth of a baby .. ." Cut. "Sorry," says the producer, "would  you mind very much saying,  'Advent to me . . . ' "

He flaps his palms on his cassock.  Of course. He should  know  these things  by now. Advent. Ubuntu.  Guilt. Confession. Renewal.

Eloquent, emotive, spontaneous, Tutu is an interviewer's dream. But there is only so much of him to go round.  He is forced  to distribute his soundbites  like loaves  and fishes.

Many times during the day , I will hear him saying: "If we do not open the wound  and cleanse  it, it will fester." "My humanity is  caught up in your humanity." "People are making  the  mistake  of  thinking   that  freedom  means  li­cence." Yet even Tutu is sometimes at a loss for words.

When the producer asks him to encapsulate his feelings on the miracle of April27, there is only the sound of a bee buzzing,  and paper rustling,  and a truck changing  gears  in the distance.  Time is suspended. Then he spreads  his arms, forgetting that the camera  is on a tight shot.

"Incredible. Incredible, incredible." He pauses.  "Elec­tric! You wanted to jump and to cry and to laugh, all at the same time. But maybe the most prominent  thing was, 'Hey! I am free. We are all free. Black and white together.' Yes, we are going to succeed, scintillatingly, spectacularly, because we have made this transition from ..."He touches his face. "... pigmentocracy to democracy. Incredible."

He claps his hands and I steel myself against the urge to join in. One final question. It is the most difficult and challenging of them all.

"Do you feel there is anything  else I should  have asked you?" Tutu leaps from the chair,  waving  his hands, trilling in protest: "No, no, no! Please don 't try."

He sits behind the desk in his study surrounded by tokens of the adoration  he­ craves. A  signed   portrait of Bill Cosby. A big red St Valentine's bear. A frog with arms in hugging  position.

Forty years ago, Tutu taught English and mathe­ matics  at Madibane  High  in Sophiatown. Then he entered  the priesthood, inspired in part by the earth-shattering sight of a white man tipping his hat to a black woman. The woman was Tutu's mother;  the man was Father Trevor  Huddlestone.

Twenty years ago, after ministering in Benoni, London, and Lesotho, Tutu was appointed  Anglican  Dean of Johannesburg.

Then Bishop of Lesotho. Then General  Secretary of the South African Council of Churches.

Then, days after winning  the Nobel  Peace Prize, Bishop of Johannesburg. Then Archbishop of Cape Town. Where does he go from here?

Somehow, he does not feel qualified for sainthood.

"The trouble," he says, "is that people don't know me. Christianity says everyone  is a saint until the contrary  is proven. But the very first thing that disqualifies me ... is feeling sorry for myself. There  are moments  when you think, not even your wife understands you . And you have a huge bout of self-pity, which leads  to self-justification. You don 't  want to spend too much time worrying  about  whether  you are holy. The thing is, have you caught  a glimpse  of God's holiness,  and what does that do to you?"

I ask Tutu whether it worries him that his own holiness has not always been apparent to some of his countrymen.

Some years ago, when he was travelling the world, denounc­ing Apartheid, calling for sanctions, and telling the West to go to hell, a white woman passed Tutu in the concourse at Jan Smuts Airport.

“It’s that bastard Tutu,” she said. “If I had a gun, I’d shoot him now.”

Yes, it worries him. There  is a real danger, in the post­ Apartheid era, that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is becoming too respectable.

Whites who once despised him for attack­ing the Government, now admire him for attacking the Government.

"You  know," he marvels, "I  have  heard  it said  that  I should go and be chaplain  to the Springboks. That wouldn't hVE been suggested,  even in a jocular way, a year or so ago. Our  spat with  Nelson,  particularly,  was good. It made people realise  that I am not a lackey of any political  party, and that democracy  does not mean not disagreeing. I have also heard it said, by someone in the ANC, that Bishop Tutu should concentrate on religion. It's quite extraordinary how quickly they echo their predecessors!"

But it doesn't surprise  him. He understands  the concept of Original  Sin: it would only surprise him if people in positions of power did not succumb  to  the  temptation to abuse  it.

He  is satisfied  that honest  moves have been made to derail  the Gravy Train,  but the thing  that worries him even more is guns.

"The arms trade is a very real concern. The Government may be persuaded that this is a foreign exchange boost, but we are saying,  if the only thing you are looking  for is more money to come into the country, why not get involved in the drug trade? I mean, it's  much more lucrative."

He laughs and recalls a bumper-sticker slogan suggested at a recent church conference on the subject. "Anglicans Do It Without  Arms".

A loaded question. For a moment, he broods on the nature of power that comes and goes.

"In fact, nobody is indispensable. You are indispensable in a way because there is nobody quite like you, but in another sense, you are not. You are on a stage at the moment. But your act will pass,  and  some  other  actor will come onto the stage. And those of us who are Christian know that death is not the worst thing that can happen to you."

He pauses, and throws his hands up in the air. "But I'm enjoying life, man! It's great, it really is wonderful to be alive at this time and to see the vindication of the people’s hopes. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful."

The archbishop  is sitting in a floral-patterned easy­chair in the lounge at Bishopscourt, surrounded by Presbyterians who have seen the Rainbow.

A woman in a dog-collar  says, "Your Grace, I would say that just being here, and seeing the way our African brothers and sisters - I mean black Africans - are able to put aside the suffering and work towards  peace, answers  a problem  that we have not answered in the States. You are light years ahead of us."

The archbishop nods sagely, touching  the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. Then he brings the delegation  back to earth.

"I hope," he says, stretching the vowel into infinity, "you are not going to be idealising us." Laughter. "Because we have very, very serious problems. We are all in need of healing. If the wound is not open and cleansed, it will fester."

The leader of the delegation presents the archbishop with a plaque and a T-shirt, and a woman knocks over a coffee­ table on her way to take a photograph.

Tutu points to the bottom of the garden, where Nelson Mandela  held his first press conference as a free man.

"Perhaps you would like to take a look, so that you too can say, 'I walked where he walked.'"

A man calls Microphone-In to complain  about the archbishop. It makes a change. He is white, and his voice is pinched with righteous indignation.

"How can you Tutu…I beg your pardon, how can you toyi-toyi in the church aisles? How can you clap and sing? Where is your dignity?"

It is not in the studio. Tutu is hooting,  shrieking,  almost weeping with laughter.

"I don't care for dignity! I frankly am not worried one little bit. I am an African. I am me. I will dance  in Washington, I will dance  in St-Martin's-in-the­ field, I will clap my hands and make a joyful noise unto the Lord. What makes you think that God does not laugh?"

He's laughing now. All it takes is Tutu.

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And yes, she isn't wearing much, probably because her clothes are somewhere at the bottom of that pile of ironing. Never mind. She'll get around to it.

For now, this cover takes its cue from the famous US Playboy cover of Marge Simpson, which caused a stir back in 2009.

Then again, we're used to cartoon characters on the cover of newspapers and magazines in our own country.

Although at least this makes a change from Julius Malema and the President.

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When I was small - this was before iPhones, Nintendos, and the Internet - I would sometimes lie on my back in a darkened room, with my eyes shut tight, trying to imagine what the universe might have looked like before the universe began.

It was a self-defeating exercise, one that has flummoxed many a Zen Master and French Existentialist over the years, because the mind is designed to contemplate anything but the nothingness of pre-existence.

When you try to think about nothing, you wind up thinking about the fact that you are trying to think about nothing, and then your head starts to hurt and you get up and stumble into the light in search of meaning and something to eat.

But still, I can picture the void, the blank slate, the heavy, fuzzy canvas of the universe before it erupted into being. Unless it was brought into being, of course, but please, my head hurts enough already.

Anyway, today I saw that image in my mind's eye again, only this time I wasn't lying in the dark, I was walking in it, one unsteady step at a time, my eyes wide open, seeing nothing, guided only by the tap-tap-tap of my cane on the ground, and the calm, soothing voice of of a man who was as much at home in this world as I was lost in it.

"Move towards my voice, carefully now, and watch out for the little step," said Hanif, our guide, who I also couldn't see, and who couldn't see me or anyone else in our stumbling, fumbling party of five.

He was the blind leading the blind, he told us with a laugh, through the blackened inner space of a sensory experience called Dialogue in the Dark, at the Sci-Bono Centre in Newtown, Johannesburg.

We had left our cellphones in a locker in the lobby, to keep us from instinctively reaching into our pockets to shine a light from their screens, as the door shut out the day and we wandered into deepest, darkest night.

I even had to hand my glasses in for safekeeping, and my first thought was, but how am I going to see? Which was exactly the point.

Dialogue in the Dark is an exercise in the art of seeing without seeing, of insight without sight, of focusing and sharpening the senses that are usually subordinate to vision.

We define the world by the way we see it, to the extent that we use seeing as a synonym for understanding, if you see what I mean.

So when, suddenly, we can't see a thing, we are adrift, astray, helpless, at the mercy of our other senses and the kindness of strangers.

A few shuffling steps feels like a journey across the cosmos; a little step up or down feels like a climb up a mountain or a descent into a pit.

We tend to think of black as the absence of colour, but really it is the presence of all colour, in such heavy quantity that it seems to suck the oxygen as well as the light out of the air.

We think we know what darkness feels and looks like because we are used to the electricity going out, or because we sometimes camp out under the stars.

But even Eskom and the Milky Way leave room for pinpricks of luminescence, and the hope that we will remember this time where we left the candles and the matches.

Real darkness, real blackness, is oppressive, all-enveloping, almost audible in its molecular density, its cloaking weight of nothingess. You can't see your hand in front of your face. You can't see patterns, or shapes, or breaks in the landscape.

You know where "down" is, because you are walking on it, but all your spatial cues and clues are gone, and you may as well be anchored on the edge of a black hole on the outskirts of the universe.

Then, slowly, you start getting used to it, you start using your other senses to touch and feel and hear your way around, and for a little while - about 45 minutes - you learn what it is like to live in a world without sight.

You learn not just by walking, but by talking, because this is a dialogue, and the best part of it is when you find your way to what you are told is a bench, and you sit down to talk with someone you only know by voice, and who only knows the world through four out of five senses.

But Dialogue in the Dark is by no means a dark, sombre, or pedagogic experience. It is moving, exhilerating, funny, enlightening, and a little scary.

You come out of it with your eyes open, maybe properly open for the first time, and more than that, with your mind open to other worlds and other ways of living.

I won't spoil it for you by telling you what you feel and experience and hear and touch, but I will just say there is a part of it near the end that took me back in a curious way to a famous scene from the first Star Wars movie.

Go and see for yourself, without seeing for yourself, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

*Dialogue in the Dark is on at the Sci-Bono Centre in Newtown, Johannesburg. For more information:http://dialogueinthedarksa.blogspot.com.

Our guide, Hanif Kruger, and his Golden Retriever, Orli

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There is a road in Johannesburg, in the heart of the northern suburbs, called the William Nicol Highway.

It is named, I believe, after Sir William Nicol Highway, a bureaucrat and politician of the variety whose legacy lives forever on in the lane-markings.

It is a famous road, stretching all the way from the Tuscan settlement of Fourways, to the English country village of Bryanston, to the grand baronial fortress of Hyde Park Mall.

Along the road itself, there is not much to see, although there is a point, as you head into the dip near Bryanston High School and the Bryanston Shopping Centre, where you can enjoy a nice steroscopic view of the two Johannesburgs: the Dubai-like cloudscrapers of Sandton to your left, and the jagged District 9 skyline of the Joburg city centre to your right.

Then the robot turns green, and it's clusters and office parks and pummice-stone salesmen all the way.

But this week, a little miracle took place on the traffic island that bisects this unlovely and much-travelled strip of macadamised tar.

Seemingly overnight, a platoon of naked, spindly trees blossomed into a blaze of colour, red and green and orange and pink and yellow blooms bursting against the icy-blue winter sky.

An unseasonably early harbinger of Spring? A student prank? The first, subtle signs of an alien invasion? An act of random kindness by a stranger with a ladder and a bakkie-load of industrial hair-netting?

No, as it turned out. It was a branding campaign by the  Breakfast Show of 94.7 Highveld Stereo. But still, I smiled, dammit.

And these trees, when Spring really comes, will look even prettier, reminding us, in our fast cars, glued to our cellphones, that there is beauty to be found even on a noisy, bustling highway in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

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A very short and alarming video of what happens when the Noonday Gun goes off on Lion Battery, on the slopes of Signal Hill in Cape Town. Press pause to buffer, then press play. Stand back, and do not walk in front of the gun. Thank you.

Noonday_Gun.mov Watch on Posterous

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This pic is upside-down. Please stand on your head to see it as nature intended. Thank you.

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I had always known there was a little town called Ladismith, which I had naturally assumed to be an incorrect spelling of Ladysmith.

The town with the proper spelling, of course, is in north-west KwaZulu-Natal.

The town with the slight mistake, I can now reveal, is in the Klein Karoo region of the Western Cape province, just off the R62 between Montagu and Calitzdorp. It is a long way, and at some point you have to stop to fill up and get something to eat. So we stopped in Ladismith.

There is a petrol station in the main street, which appears to be the main attraction in Ladismith, judging from the number of cars and bakkies that were there. A storm was about to break, the sun forcing its way through barrages of rolling cloud to paint the light in a silvery glow.

There were three flags flying on tall masts, their lanyards clinking in the gusts, a French and a British and a South African. The rainbow flag was threadbare and serrated at the edges, as if it had been rescued from a battle.

I strolled across the road, waiting for the schoolchildren on their bicycles to pass, and I walked into a shop called Karoo Vine, which had a giant green bottle of wine as its monument, and a chalkboard advertising Wyn Wine Port Olywe Olives Cheese Kaas Nuts Biltong. I wasn't really looking to buy. I just wanted to stretch my legs a little.

The lady behind the counter looked up and greeted me with a tra-la-la of the purest Afrikaans I had heard in a long time. "Vriendelike welkom, Meneer," she said, sticking prices on goods with slim, elegant fingers, "en hoe gaan dit met U vandag?"

I was taken aback for a moment, because the default in-store greeting in the city where I come from is an icy glare and a thin-lipped nod that lets you know you've just been profiled as a potential shoplifter. Then I regained my composure and answered the lady in the purest Afrikaans I could muster.

"Nee, dit gaan baie goed, dankie, Mevrou, en met U?"

We had a brief conversation about where I had travelled from and what I was doing in Ladismith, and then she gestured at the shelves and invited me to make myself at home. I felt like buying something after all.

I picked a packet of droë perskes and a dried peach roll and some Karoo biltong, and I took them to the counter and put them down.

The lady smiled her thanks and added up the tally, which was R54 exactly. I handed her my credit card. Her shoulders sank, and she sadly shook her head.

"O, ek is jammer, Meneer, maar ons neem nie kaartjies nie." She pointed at a small sign saying Jammer Geen Kaarte No Cards Accepted on the side of the cash register.

I did not have any cash on me, so I smiled my apologies and turned around to put the goods back on the shelves. Then she quickly added: "Maar U is baie welkom om met 'n EFT te betaal, Meneer."

I suddenly forgot the Afrikaans for "really", and I said, "really?" She laughed and said people who came to her shop from afar often paid her by Electronic Funds Transfer, and in all the time she had been running the shop, she had never once had someone not pay her after promising that they would. "Really?" I said.

And she wrote down her bank details on a small piece of paper, with R54 and her name, which was Elsa, and her cellphone number below.

She wrapped up the perskes and the peaches and the biltong and wished me 'n wonderlike dag en 'n veilige reis verder.

I walked out into the main street of Ladismith, in the Klein Karoo, between Montagu and Calitzdorp, and I saw the rainbow flag flying, and the clouds passing overhead. And I thought to myself, this is a good place, with good people. And I wasn't just thinking about Ladismith.

*In case you're wondering, yes, I did EFT Elsa the R54 when I got back to Johannesburg.

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*I wrote this piece for a book entitled "SA 27 April 1994", about what happened in SA on 27 April 1994. It is an almost entirely accurate account of what transpired on that historic day, perhaps the only Public Holiday in the history of South Africa when we didn't all go to the mall, the beach, or the braai, because we were too busy standing in the queue to vote for the right to go to the mall, the beach, or the braai in peace and in freedom.

Wednesday, April 27, 1994, dawned like just any other Wednesday, April 27 in the history of the new South Africa.

As the sun rose on the colours of the new South African flag, with its black, green, and gold symbolising the African National Congress, and its red, white, and blue symbolising the flags of many other nations, a new spirit of hope and reconcilaition began to spread through the land like wildfire.

In the tranquil garden suburb of Illovo, Johannesburg, Mrs Blanche White, a freelance fashion buyer and qualified madam, picked up her telephone extension and asked her maid, Gladys, to meet her in the dining-room for an important announcement.

"Gladys," she said, "today is a very historical day in the history of the new South Africa. It is the day of the first democratic election, a day on which people of all creeds, colours, and races will join hands and go to the polls together to cast their vote for peace and freedom. Please keep me a place in front of you in the queue and I will join you in seven and a half hours."

Across the bustling freeway, in the throbbing township of Alexandra, Mr Jeffrey Mpuli, a freelance entrepreneur and small businessman, set up his ironing-board outside the local community hall and began hawking a wide range of fruit, vegetables, cooldrinks, digital watches, hubcaps, election posters, baptismal certificates, IFP stickers, and unused ballot papers in packs of 150,000.

Meanwhile, just outside the busy metropolis of Bloemfontein, at the world-renowned De Brug military base, squads of highly-trained and disciplined soldiers of the National Peacekeeping Force were donning riot shields, full-face helmets, flak jackets and spare ammunition belts in preparation for a full-scale battle with their superior officers over salary deductions and the lack of a decent pub on the premises.

Further inland, in the small maize-rich town of Ventersdorp in the Western Transvaal, a battalion of heavily-camouflaged Boer freedom fighters drew up in a screeching convoy to occupy an important regional polling station, only to be told to go to the back of the queue because no-one had arrived to open the polling station yet.

All across the country, the hard-working men and women of the IEC (Incompetent Electoral Commission) were battling against considerable odds to remember what they had done with 80-million regional and national ballot papers that had been there only a moment ago.

And yet, despite the obstacles and setbacks, the mood in party political circles was one of cautious optimism that the day would turn out to be a triumph for the democratic process, except at the headquarters of the Pan Africanist Congress, where the mood was one of cautious pessimism that the day would turn out to be a triumph for the democratic process.

Already, the SABC's Election '94 Channel 1, broadcasting in English, Zuu, Pedi, Setswana, Venda, Tsonga and Unrelenting Waffle, was crossing over to Barbara Folscher in Cape Town, who reported that it was cold and wet and that people were standing in a long line to vote.

At the Mfolo West polling station in Soweto, Mrs Mavis Mfolo, 93, was telling a BBC television interviewer that she had been standing in the hot sun for three and a half hours and she did not see why she should let him into the queue just because he was a foreign journalist.

However, when he showed her his Britsh passport, along with an official IEC Press Release stating that anyone who had been resident in the country for more than five minutes was entitled to vote, Mrs Mflo agreed to stand back and let him go first.

On the other side of the city, in the picturesque industrial suburb of Alberton, Mr Fanie de Wit, 22, a self-employed panelbeater and rugby prop-forward, was overjoyed to find himself at the front of the queue after a gruelling yet invigorating wait of six hours and 25 minutes.

As he showed his identity document/Book of Life/temporary voter's registration card/firearm license to the IEC official at the door, Fanie felt a sudden surge of newfound patriotism and a shared sense of destiny with millions of his fellow South Africans.

Suffused with positive energy, Fanie fought to stem the unfamiliar moistness in his eyes as he put his hands under the ultraviolet light and returned the greeting of the friendly IEC official sitting behind the table.

Then, with a profound spirit of liberation leaping in his heart, he waited patiently as the friendly IEC official at the next table sprayed invisible ink all over his fingertips.

From there, it was just a few short steps to the friendly IEC official at the next table, who stamped Fanie's identity document with invisible ink before telling him to come back in four and a half hours because the ballot papers had not arrived yet.

Meanwhile, on thousands of television sets across the country, the SABC's Election '94 Channel 2 was crossing over to Gary Alphonso in Ulundi, who reported that it cloudy and overcast and that people were standing in a long line to vote.

But at a crowded polling station in the sprawling township of Vosloorus in the hyphenated province of Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging, international election observers had to be called in to defuse tensions as a group of furious IEC officials stood around blaming each other for leaving 252,000 Inkatha Freedom Party stickers behind at the office.

Fortunately, after several tense hours of negotiation, it was unanimously agreed that polling should go ahead without IFP stickers on the ballot papers, seeing as the ANC was going to win the election anyway.

On the other hand, in the remote district of Vergenoeg in the far Northrn Cape, polling officials were delighted to discover that rolls and rolls of Inkatha Freedom Party stickers had arrived as ordered. Unfortunately, there were no ballot papers to go with them.

After a series of urgent cellular phone calls to the IEC's elite 24-hour standby operation squad, who weren't in at the moment, it was unanimously decided that anyone who wanted to vote for a party other than the the IFP should just write their party's name in the blank space around Chief Minister Magosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi's head. Neatness would be taken into account.

Meanwhile, the SABC's Election '94 Channel 1 was crossing over to Danie Hefers in Pietersburg, who reported that it was dry and hot and that people were standing in a long line to rent an Arnold Schwarzenegger video.

As the historic day moved towards its logical conclusion - the declaration of another public holiday to cope with the backlog - the beleaguered IEC called an international media conference to dispute allegations that the election was turning out to be the biggest bureauratic shambles in South African history, next to the counting of votes after the election.

At the plush Gallagher's Estate Conference Centre, midway between Midrand and Halfway House, an expectant hush fell over the gathering of lightly dozing media personalities, as an IEC official took the podium to announce that the conference would be delayed for up to three hours because the computers were down, and in any case, someone had just taken the podium.

But for all these minor hiccups, hitches, and bungles, millions of South Africans from all walks of life could only agree that Wednesday, April 27, 1994, had been one of the most moving days in the history of the nation.

"It's incredible," said Mrs Patience Mabandla, 66, of Alldays in the far Northern Transvaal. "I've only been standing in this queue for five and a half hours, and I've already moved 3.2 metres closer to the front. I'm definitely coming back tomorrow for more."

*From "SA 27 April 1994", published by Queillerie and compiled by André Brink.

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Sent from my iPhone

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Sent from my iPhone

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Sent from my iPhone

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Sent from my iPhone

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Imogen Heap sits at her see-through piano, the inside lit by coils of red-and-white Christmas lighting, a Chinese gong and the skeleton of an acacia tree dangling above her head.

She flexes her delicate fingers over the keys, and then she freezes, struck by a fleeting thought. “First,” she says, turning to the audience, “I need my tea.” She hooks a dainty cup, takes a sip, and throws back her head, gurgling.

Then she plays the piano and sings, the music dreamy and sinuous, her voice weaving in and out of the synthesized loops, as the stage darkens and the tree sparkles with beads of light.

Sitting a few rows away, in the theatre at Emperors Palace in Kempton Park, I am mesmerised.

Until last year, I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce Imogen Heap’s name – the “g” is soft, it turns out – and I was only vaguely aware of her songs on the soundtracks of TV shows (The OC, Heroes) and movies (The Chronicles of Narnia). But today, I am happy to count myself as one of her biggest friends.

Imogen Heap doesn’t have fans, you see. She has friends, followers, fellow travellers, evangelists in the army of the Imogen Nation.

On Twitter alone, @imogenheap has more than one-and-a-half million followers, and crucially, she follows more than 32,000 of them back.

She posts iPhone snaps and videos, cheerfully invites journalists and radio jocks to DM her for cellphone interviews, and provides a tweet-by-tweet chronicle of life on and off the road, signing off with little xx’s.

Few recording and performing artists have embraced social media with as much glee and high-tech savvy as Imogen, who last year wore a “Twitter dress” to the Grammy Awards, allowing her flock to send messages that flashed on a collar embedded with LED lights, or Twitpics that appeared on an iPod Touch encased in a transparent Fendi handbag. But the connections run much further than fashion.

When Imogen steps onto the stage with a wave of jazz hands at Emperors Palace, she announces that it’s going to be a long evening, “because you chose some really obscure songs for me to play”.

It’s a cherished tradition: on the eve of every concert, she crowdsources her set, inviting visitors to her website to vote for the songs they’d most like to hear.

On Twitter, on Facebook, on MySpace, on YouTube, on Flickr, she reaches out and draws her community into her creative circle, encouraging and using the contributions of the crowd for album artwork, Press bios, and even guest performances.

At Emperors Palace, she stands centre-stage and gestures into the wings, welcoming a troupe of nine acapella singers who splendidly call themselves the Mellifluous Cahoots.

They’re from Johannesburg, and they uploaded, to Vimeo, an audition video that Imogen saw and liked.

So now they take their places, faces beaming, fingers clicking, swaying with the grace of the swooning, lilting harmonies as Imogen weaves the main thread of a song that talks of “harmonic connection and stereo symbiosis”, and ends with a chant that could be her mantra: “You’re only what you give back.”

Here is an artist who doesn’t sell albums by the truckload, certainly not in South Africa, where her two-city concert promoter, Charl van Heyningen, took a chance only to appease the pleadings of his young daughter, Emma.

Here is an artist who doesn’t have a hit you can hum, whose songs seduce you by osmosis rather than catch you with a hook, and who was once dropped by her record label for lack of commercial appeal.

And yet Imogen Heap has crafted for herself a thriving career, by breaking down the walls that encircle the artistic elite, by casting aside facilitators and go-betweens to communicate directly with her constituents, and more than anything, by making the sort of music that drifts and rises above the hubbub.

In the age of social media, artists can no longer rely on the distribution of physical media to build a profile and make a living.

I was ambivalent, even indifferent to Imogen Heap’s charms until I saw a tweet last year from @comradesipho, I think, rhapsodising about a song called “Hide & Seek”.

Hmmm, I thought, and I Googled and YouTubed and Groovesharked, until I, too, was listening to the song, with its haunting, vocoderised vocals, over and over again.

On stage, between numbers, Imogen Heap is endearingly kooky and easily distracted, given to wittering on about family bonfires, African trees, and male friends who take the biscuit.

But when she sits at the piano, she seems possessed, in a trance, and all that matters is the singer and the song.

 “If I wasn’t me,” she says, in a preamble to the next number, “and I was in the audience, watching me, I would want to be me.”

I reach for my iPhone, and I quickly send that out as a tweet. It’s a lot safer, and lot less cheesy, than holding a lighter in the air.

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Shot with my iPhone 4 at Emmarentia Dam.

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On behalf of arachnids and arachnophiliacs everywhere, I wish to register the strongest possible protest against this advert for the Optimus One phone from LG. 

As you can see, by way of demonstrating that the phone is capable of searching the Internet, the copywriter has chosen to play on man's irrational fear of the eight-legged creatures that share our planet and mean us no harm.

Well, not man's, in this case, but little girl's.

Little girl who has seen big spider, screamed, whipped out her Optimus One, waited for 3G signal, fired up browser, typed in www.google.com, typed in "Big Spider Removal", waited for 3G signal...sorry, little girl. Next time, try something from Apple.

Or even better, try running away from the spider, which is far more afraid of you than you should be you of it.

But the point here is the advice that the ad contains, which is to grab the nearest can of shaving foam and spray it on the spider. I cannot even begin to tell you how ill-considered, ignorant, cruel, and outrageously misleading this advice is.

But I will just say, in the interests of accuracy, that I looked up "Big Spider Removal" on Google, and it returned just one result, which made no mention at all of shaving foam.

Please, people. Do not spray shaving foam on spiders. Do not spray anything on spiders. Do not be nasty to spiders. And do not buy your children an Optimus One phone from LG.

I would complain formally to the Advertising Standards Authority about this ad, but I believe they're very busy at the moment with all the complaints from the millions of people who bought themselves PowerBand bracelets and have not won any major international sporting tournaments.

*Update: This ad, and its TV variant, has now been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa. Hooray! A victory for arachnids and arachnophiliacs everywhere.

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We were just outside Tzaneen, on the R71 to Phalaborwa, a road that serves little purpose other than to cleave the mopani-veld in two and allow you to get to the Kruger National Park as quickly as possible.

Just how quickly, became apparent when a man in a smart brown uniform leaped onto the tarmac up ahead, waving his hand excitedly in the air.

This is a sight that always makes my heart sink to my knees, whether or not the person is wearing a uniform, and I just managed to steal a glance at my speedometer as I shifted my foot from the petrol to the brake. I was doing 90km/h, or thereabouts. Which wasn't a problem, since this was a 120 zone, right?

I drifted into the minibus taxi lane, took a deep breath, and cut the engine. In the back seat, the children were yanking their iPod buds out of their ears with looks of just-awoken confusion on their faces. We weren't there yet, and neither, from the look of it, were we at a Caltex One-Stop or an Ultra City.

In the passenger seat, my navigator gritted her teeth and asked me how fast I'd been going. I was hardly doing anything at all, I said, knowing full well that a more precise answer would follow shortly.

Then the man in uniform was leaning down and looking in the window. He was a burly man, brimming with official good cheer. "Good morning, good morning!" he said, "how are you?" I said I was fine, thanks, and established that he was fine too. Then he asked for my driver's license.

"Do you know how fast you were going?" he said. I shrugged. "About 70 or so?" He told me: "Ninety-four point seven. In a sixty zone."

I feebly said I hadn't seen the 60 sign, which was true, but not very useful. The traffic officer asked whether I would like to see the reading.

Usually, I decline such invitations, on the grounds of my innocent faith in RADAR-assisted speed-tracking technologies, along with my reluctance to enter into protracted arguments with Public Prosecutors in small country towns. Also, the trap was all the way on the other side of the road.

Then again, I needed to stretch my legs. I looked right, left, and right again, and crossed the road.

There was another, slimmer traffic officer sitting on a folding chair behind the RADAR machine. He was busy breaking off a row of Beacon Hazelnut chocolate, from a big slab wrapped in chintzy, Christmassy foil. I greeted him, and he showed me where to look. In big red digits, it said: 94.7. Okay, fine.

The burly officer sat down on his own folding chair, in the shade of the mopani tree, and reached for his clipboard. He peered at my license, and asked me where I was from. "Joburg," I said, as if that explained everything. He smiled, and began writing things down.

I stood ready to answer all the usual questions, hoping to make a quick getaway, and wondering whether I would be able to pay the fine on www.payfine.co.za. And then something happened.

I had my back to the road, so all I saw was a flash of uniform as the slim officer dashed across the road. Then I heard some shouting, and the burly officer stood up, with a look of alarm on his face. "Eissshhh!" he said. He handed me back my license, and said "You can go", and then he rushed across to a light-blue VW Golf, parked on an incline a few metres away from the RADAR.

I didn't know what was going on, but I seized my license and the opportunity to get away. I hopped behind the wheel of our car, belted up, turned the key, and pulled off smoothly.

I looked at the traffic officers. They were waving, this time in a friendly manner. The burly officer raised both his arms in the air, in the manner of someone who has just won a bout in the ring. I looked in my sideview mirror and waved back.

I turned to Amanda, as we cruised along the highway at less than 60km/h. "What just happened?" I asked. Well, she had called over the slim traffic officer, and asked him whether he would be nice to us, in exchange for a piece of important information. Then she had told him, pointing across the road: "You left the lights of your Golf on."

And so we continued our journey, happy to live in a land where the traffic police are open to a little friendly negotiation, and the R71 leads you all the way to the Kruger National Park.

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