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It is a great privilege to write an editorial for this publication, especially since I come from quite a different background than that of your eminent contributors. In the words of our immediate Past President Thabo Mbeki, ‘I am an African’ in spite of my roots that go back about 330 years, to Saxe Coburg in the ‘old’ East Germany.

The towns of Gotha and Erfurt are where a young man fled the poverty and despair to look for a new future. The surnames Bot, Bote and Both exist in these regions, but when this soldier landed up in the...