For South Africans living through the current African National Congress civil war, with its associated fog, it’s hard to believe things could be as bad elsewhere. The sad reality is that the world, more generally, is not in great shape. Terror threats abound, traditional sources of employment are under threat, political populism is on the rise, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is divided, as is Europe, and economic growth in Africa has not yielded the social gains it should have. Troubling times indeed!