I understand if you didn’t watch last week’s state of the nation address. There was other, more interesting programming on offer, like infomercials for antifungal foot cream. Besides, it’s all starting to feel faintly undignified, like watching some once-majestic creature of the deep, washed up by a freak weather event, quietly explode on a beach. 

Still, there was one part of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech that captured the public imagination, or at least shot it with a dart and threw a tarp over it: the brief tale of a young woman called Tintswalo...