Subtle magic of an itinerant statesman – The Mail & Guardian

Subtle magic of an itinerant statesman – The Mail & Guardian

It began in an unlikely place: a modest lecture hall at SOAS in London, the kind where the air still carries the faint chalk-scent of older debates.  On a grey November afternoon, Ebrahim Rasool stood before a room of students, academics and a scattering of diplomats who had slipped in quietly at the back. His topic, “What can Britain learn from South Africa’s transition from apartheid?” sounded, at first, like a retrospective talk about a dista…