WHEN I WAS eight years old I visited South Africa, my dad’s homeland, for the first time. I’ll never forget flying into Jo’burg, looking down over the houses in the city and seeing hundreds of turquoise squiggles and dots. ‘Wow,’ I said, excitedly, ‘everyone has a swimming pool here!’

My dad gave me a stern look. ‘Not everyone,’ he said. It was 1987, and apartheid was in its final throes.