Sometimes I feel as if I’m not doing enough to help. Call me patriotic if you want but I feel as if I need to do something: for myself, for those I would help and for this country.

Being a communist doesn’t seem so bad after I think about our situation. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and we as citizens of this country - and this community - watch from behind our electric windows at the robots and tut tut, asking ourselves how we could let this happen.

We blame apartheid: a shadow of a racist man that lurks in the dark corners of Sharpville, but we fail to realise that He is just a shadow. I wonder if the rainbow that is now South Africa will have its pot of gold at the end . . . The road towards our gold is long and tedious, the obstacles we face are large and dangerous and we, as a country, are less than equipped. Our Jackets of Honesty are torn at the seams, our shoes of Integrity have holes in them and our backs are heavily loaded with Guilt.

We fail to realise that our own neighbours are suffering. A man, who has lost his wife, has no money for transport home so he walks from Saltriver to his home, where I sit in one of our two cars next door and don’t realise there are people next door who need my help.

The truth is I want to stop on that road to our gold, next to a woman carrying three kids and a mortgage with HIV/AIDS and help her along. I want to step out of the car into the mist with bags of warm clothing and food for the nine year olds at the robot. I want to buy my neighbour a bus ticket so he can go wherever he needs for free. And I want to watch every other person at the robot get out their car with me and help too.