On my recent trip to Africa, I was in a township called Langa, a sattelite township of Cape Town where workers travel many miles for work. They live in very squalid conditions and to the outsider, there seems little hope. The guy who showed us round was very intelligent and eloquent and didn’t think much of the government so we asked him if he would ever go into politics as he would do well. He said something very interesting – “No, I see all these good guys going into politics and so many of them become corrupt, I don’t want such money and power to change me”. He chose to live in Langa because of its sense of community which leads me to believe that my idea of a lack of hope is based on my own western affluent ideas and therefore I should rethink.