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every night, we’re hands-on with them all weekend and we’re very aware of how lucky we are. We’ve just moved to a lovely house near the Johannesburg Zoo, and we give thanks all the time. We are very, very aware that in South Africa this Gini coefficient [measurement of income inequality] is probably the biggest in the world, and we remind our children just how lucky we are. I feel very blessed.

      Ruda: A relationship doesn’t just happen by itself – it either goes up or down. How do you keep yours strong?

      Angel: Every night for the past ten years we’ve known each other, we sit down to say, “My high about you is this, my low about you is this. And what I’m looking forward to with you is this.” So that acts as a barometer. Every night we do a sort of a control-alt-­delete on how we’re feeling. Sometimes it is “My high about you is you; I don’t have a low about you,” or “My low about you is you, I don’t have a high.” It’s funny, the little things that count. “My high about you is that you brought me coffee; my low about you is that you don’t notice when I cook the food.” So that’s a great way that we’re constantly recalibrating where we are with each other.

      Ruda: It’s awareness, hmm?

      Angel: Ja, absolutely. I’ve realised his love language is very different from mine. His love language is more about tidying – isn’t that amazing? I’ve got this wonderful husband who decorates and tidies. He’s a Portuguese man, and he’s got this wonderful sense of home and decor. And my love language is very much words, and affection. We meet in the middle. When he wants to show me how much he loves me, he starts tidying up, which is the opposite of what I would do. It’s been a wonderful time. We’re lucky, we’ve got both sets of parents here and all our siblings are here. So it’s lots of family get-togethers . . . very big Portuguese family on his side; I’m one of four siblings on this side, so it’s a lot of loving each other’s families at the same time, which is also very rewarding.

      Ruda: It’s not always easy, because you meet a person, but you marry the family.

      Angel: Indeed. I’ve always wished that I spoke proper Portuguese. I once gave him a Valentine’s present, back in the day: “I’m giving myself Portuguese lessons, darling.” But they only lasted about five weeks and then I kind of lost track, so that’s one regret. One day I’ll make sure I learn Portuguese.

      Ruda: Talk to me about your children. You say your daughter came like a moonbeam?

      Angel: She was my little moonbeam!

      Ruda: How did that change you?

      Angel: For one thing I stopped wearing wings when I fell pregnant.

      Ruda: What do you mean by “wearing wings”?

      Angel: I used to wear these big, full-on wings made with feathers and fake flames and beads, and so people would come up to me and say, “Who are you, what are you?” And I’d say, “My name is Angel and I run an ad agency,” and it worked – shameless PR. I think having Lulu really relaxed me, because I was thirty-­three, I was flying solo, and I was thinking, I don’t know if any man wants to marry me, I’m too crazy and too intimidating and whatever. So by the time I had her, I almost felt that I didn’t need a man anymore. I sound terrible! And when I stopped looking, there was Carlos. Lulu and Samuel de-stress me. Coming home, playing guitar with them and reading stories is really amazing, and I feel so much more whole. You stress out about whatever’s not working, but then when you sit and you practice the G or the D7 chord with your boy, it really does focus your life.

      Ruda: What are the most important values that you try to teach your kids?

      Angel: Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. So every night: “Thank you God for . . .” We have our standard stuff we say thank you for, and then each child needs to think about what that’s about. Awareness of how blessed we are. Awareness that we’re all healthy, and that we go to wonderful schools and that we live in a beautiful climate. Awareness of how not every South African is as privileged as us, and asking what can we do? So always thinking about how you can make a difference. Music, dancing – we put up the music and we dance around. Family. Humility.

      Ruda: Tell me about your home. Where is it?

      Angel: We’re in Saxonwold, we’re very lucky. We had a big control-­alt-delete in our life about two and a half years ago, when we were thinking we can’t live in Jozi anymore, we must live in Cape Town. Looking back on that, I think it was a reaction to me wanting to get out of the ad industry and equating Joburg with my ad-world life. And so the only practical thing that seemed to be possible was to sell our house and move to Cape Town.

      We didn’t actually move to Cape Town, but we sold our house, rented in Greenside for a year, got the kids into new schools in Cape Town and were just about to move, but then realised that we would be living on an aeroplane. I think if I was happy to be a soccer mum and not needing to work, then that would be different, we could live in Cape Town. But here we were thinking of taking the kids away from our friends and family, out of their schools, and then I was going to say, “Bye guys, I’m flying off to Lagos and Nairobi for work.” That was not going to work.

      So, being able to have this kind of fresh look at Joburg was amazing, realising the diversity and the opportunity here and the great stuff we’re doing with Homecoming Revolution. It all meant that we bought a new house in Saxonwold and called it Cape Town, so we’ve moved to Cape Town. And it’s really great to feel that we’ve actively chosen to be in the city. Joburg has just been voted the coolest city in the world. So we see all the people fly in and out from all over the continent and from abroad and feel like we’re very actively Joburgers.

      Anton Harber: “Finding a full range of South African voices”

      Anton Harber is one of South Africa’s most respected figures in journalism. Having worked on the Rand Daily Mail, he was part of the team that started the Weekly Mail (later the Mail & Guardian) and its first editor. After fourteen years as head of the Department of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, he went back to the newsroom as editor in chief of news at the broadcaster eNCA. That would last only sixteen months before he returned to Wits. We spoke in Johannesburg in March 2016, just after his appointment at eNCA.

      Ruda: Anton, you studied at Wits in the 1980s. There was a very strong anti-apartheid movement at the university. How did that shape you? The 1980s was a rough time.

      Anton: It was a rough time. I arrived at Wits in 1976, so it was a momentous year. I came from a liberal background, a liberal family, and at Wits I was introduced to a more radical politics. I got involved in NUSAS [National Union of South African Students] and student politics at the time and learned, I suppose, a new language – the language of the radical politics of the time. That was a major influence on my work and my journalism thereafter.

      Ruda: Did you get to know a side of South Africa that you hadn’t been aware of?

      Anton: Oh yes. Because even though I grew up in a liberal family, our politics was within quite a narrow, I suppose white, framework.

      Ruda: Apartheid worked?

      Anton: Not quite, but . . .

      Ruda: I mean in the sense that it kept us apart.

      Anton: Yes, in that sense it absolutely did. At Wits I suppose one was introduced to a wider range of politics and a range of people one didn’t meet in a closeted apartheid society.

      Ruda: And then you started working with the Rand Daily Mail. Tell us a little bit about that? That was a famous newspaper which has faded into history. It had a very specific place and role in the country in the 1980s, right?

      Anton: It did. It was the leading liberal voice, and for someone like myself, it was the place to be as a journalist, as a political writer. It was the place that I think gave the most space and freedom to its political writers. But it was at a troubled time, because the paper was in the last years of its life and it was under pressure and in decline, and so it was

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