David Smith, the (UK) Guardian’s new Africa correspondent based in South Africa, recently traveled through that country and thinks it reminds him a lot of the United States.
I agree with him.
Among others, both countries, Smith suggests, are the superpowers of their continents (though the US also rules the world), have diverse populations and its cities could be cousins: Johannesburg is like LA (cars, showbiz, wealth, crime and inequality), Durban like Miami (tropical, art deco), the administrative capital Pretoria (“not the center of the action”) is like Washington D.C., and Cape Town is San Francisco, “a place apart.”
Smith, who only recently took over for Chris McGreal as Africa correspondent, also has a theory about what makes the countries different.
Take a listen:
