Mandla Ndlovu was born in1952, far in the Northern Province in an area still hiding from GPS technology, a place rich in Mopane worms and admirable family values. The Ndlovu family comes from a village called Bevula, relatively close to the Kruger National Park’s Phunda Maria gate. Mandla’s father, Solomon Hlanganani was a policeman, and his mother Ethel Basambilu was a nurse, both highly respected careers at the time.

The plant industry, although volatile and highly capital intensive at the moment, has been fairly bullish for the last two years. However, for 10 years prior to this, there was very little investment in infrastructure in the country, which is where the bulk of the plant industry’s business rests. In recent times, the mega-projects such as the Gautrain, Coega, the 2010 stadia, airports, dams, water and roads have driven a substantial increase in volumes.

Historically, infrastructure has been one of the more important drivers of economic and social progress. What is less recognised is the role that infrastructure can play in bringing about stability and peace in post-conflict environments.

Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, set in the early 1860s, culminates in a street battle between a gang of “Natives” (protestant settlers of Dutch and British descent) led by Bill "The Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) and newly arrived Irish catholic immigrants led by Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio). The film is based on factual accounts of a period in the history of America when dirty cops and corrupt politicians brought the city to the point of anarchy. During the riots of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln deployed federal troops on the streets of New York to restore order.

South Africans are often genuinely surprised to discover that other nations have also been colonised, waged revolutionary struggle, rebuilt society and made peace with the ancient enemy. The realisation that our historical progress and current reality are not entirely new under the sun is like a child’s discovery that she is no longer alone in the universe but conversely (and catastrophically) is no longer the centre of it. Like the Americans, we are a navel-gazing bunch.

American President John F Kennedy once observed that the Chinese word for crisis, weiji, contained two characters: one representing danger and the other representing opportunity. We are indeed living through a time of danger. The global economy has fallen off a cliff. The financial crisis and the resulting dramatic slump in international trade have destroyed jobs around the world.

The readiness of South African industries to cheat has gone too far. The disease of dishonest business practices has permeated the major industries of the country, and most menacingly, it is these businesses that impact directly on the lives of the poor, and in turn undermine Government's development agenda. Think bread, milk, steel, bricks, cement, sand, pharmaceuticals, banking and even airlines. The sheer breadth of cartel and anti-competitive behaviour within South Africa is highly unnerving, especially when considered in the context of a global recession that is reaching into even the deepest of pockets.

Under the microscope once again, the practice of labour broking is rousing heated debate within industry circles. Two very defined schools of thought are tackling its very existence - to ban or not to ban? The new fuel to this fiery debate was Namibia's recent decision to ban labour broking, effectively criminalising the practice within its new Labour Act. The constitutionality of the ban was challenged unsuccessfully in Namibia's High Court, which then prompted a rising voice within the ANC to announce similar intentions.

Reports of the death of democracy in our new republic turned out to have been somewhat exaggerated. Our young nation is starting to make a habit of talking itself into a state of profound panic before calmly stepping up to do the right thing. In this, as in surprisingly many other respects, we resemble no one more than the Americans. I was reminded of this when I went to cast my vote at the Sea Point Hall on April 22nd.

Reports of the death of democracy in our new republic turned out to have been somewhat exaggerated. Our young nation is starting to make a habit of talking itself into a state of profound panic before calmly stepping up to do the right thing. In this, as in surprisingly many other respects, we resemble no one more than the Americans. I was reminded of this when I went to cast my vote at the Sea Point Hall on April 22nd.

The first 100 days of the Zuma presidency have come and gone and some commentators seem, frankly, more than a little shocked that this president seems to have a knack for keeping his eye on the ball. We are a far cry from the hysterical Zulu gevaar dished out by the quality broadsheets in the run up to the mid-summer massacre at Polokwane. As the arbitrary 100-day milestone first popularised by Franklin Roosevelt loomed, it was easy to imagine frantic editors desperately floundering after some chink in the presidential armour. How they must miss those halcyon days when the rogue elements of our "intelligence community" fed them rivers of juicy disinformation. It is telling that during the entire period the only real bit of bad press to stick to Zuma was the storm in a teaspoon about the new head of the Constitutional Court, where even the DA was forced to concede that the entire to-do was really no more than an admin cock-up.

During the late 1980s a progressive activist gave an analysis of the state of the nation at a National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) conference held at UCT. His name has long since been lost in a cloud of Jameson and Black Label but here at the New Frontier we vaguely remember what he said about the media and the "system". Something along the lines that they don't tell you what they're up to all of the time but they always tell you what they're up to.

The events of the past week or so bring to mind the words of an old comrade from the Eastern Cape who made the seemingly obvious observation that while the ANC has been given the honour of leading the nation at this point in our history, it is not the nation – only the nation is the nation. During the struggle there were two competing versions of the nation battling for supremacy but since 1994 we have seen the emergence of a national consciousness that transcends the old divisions. It began appropriately on April 27th in the queues where South Africans discovered that they share a certain dry sense of humour. This is most fortunate because a good sense of humour is an essential precondition for survival in the beloved country. Then, at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, we discovered a shared passion for sport. The nation expected the Springboks to win and when they did there was dancing in the streets.