What with banking crises and market gyrations on both side of the Atlantic, you probably haven’t noticed what’s going on in South Africa. But if you think you’ve got it bad, spare a thought for South Africans, where things seem only to go from bad to dreadful. A called-for national shutdown last week by the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters, the country’s third largest political party, was a bit of a damp squib. But you shouldn’t for one minute think that its grievances aren’t shared by all South Africans, whose lives are blighted by power blackouts of up to 10 hours a day and corruption on a Homeric scale.

The two, you might not be surprised to hear, are connected. Some local commentators think the country a failed state. Not yet, it isn’t, but it is in danger of going that way.