What conclusions you draw from the view rather depends on your attitude towards the continent's biggest economy, and its uncertain future.

Do you focus on the squalor of almost a million people packed into makeshift, often rat-infested, homes? And the long queue outside the nearby community centre, where the poorest have again gathered to receive soup and blankets?

"We are angry. Because this is not the freedom that we fought for," says long-time community activist Linda Twala, handing out blankets, and lamenting the enduring presence of corruption and drug lords.

"We need jobs, we need houses… we need dignity."

Or do you lift your head a little, and notice the tarmacked streets leading to neat rows of new housing on the far hillside, the impressive motorway behind, and, to the north, the train racing out of a new tunnel en route to Johannesburg's refurbished airport?

"I'm inspired by what's around me - the changes around me," says Morris, an affable 24-year-old who needs to get downstairs to finish preparations for tonight's regular street party, which spills out of his soon-to-be renovated bar, Stoep15, and often attracts celebrities.

"It's going to take a while, but change is definitely there. It is up to the youth… to get up on their own two feet and make a difference. We can complain, but no-one else is going to make the difference," he says.

South Africa's economy - buffeted by labour unrest, political uncertainties and the seemingly endless aftershocks of racial apartheid - is not roaring ahead like some of its neighbours.

In the context of the much touted and much questioned theme of "Africa Rising", South Africa stands apart - still the continent's largest and most sophisticated economy, but one that is warped and weighed down by its own unique history and contradictions.

And yet in Alexandra, businessmen like Tebogo Mogashoa share the broader mood of optimism that is rippling across much of Africa these days.

"The future is bright," says Mr Mogashoa, 37, as he strides through what he believes may be the busiest - and for its size, the most profitable - shopping centre on the continent.

Mr Mogashoa built the PanAfrica Mall four years ago on the crowded edge of Alexandra to cater for the local market.

There is a KFC and McDonald's on the corner, a big Pick 'n Pay supermarket inside and a cacophony of honking minibus taxis touting for business on the street outside as well as on the mall's car-park roof.

"This mall tells the story of the potential of South Africa… in that it's a depressed economy where there is poverty, but there can also be an upside of success and wealth creation. As you can see, people here are not poor. They actually live of a strictly cash basis where they are not exposed to any debt," he says.

"This shopping centre hosts close to a million people per month. It's growing at about 10% per annum."

Mr Mogashoa, whose business has expanded into finance and other ventures, is a now a multi-millionaire with a sumptuous office and a taste for motor racing.

He seems clear-eyed about the challenges of poor education and corruption in South Africa, and the need for government to do much more to provide infrastructure and stimulate investment.

But he is resolutely unconvinced by the pessimists and their statistics.

"The high unemployment figures (of around 25%) discount what we call the second economy. Many people who trade in the informal economy are not recorded. We are seeing a lot of new capital getting into the pockets of the people of the historically poor areas like Alex," says Mr Mogashoa, walking down the crowded supermarket aisles of Pick 'n Pay.

"What is attractive about this country is its political stability, notwithstanding the social unrest and the reports in the media. The future of this country is fairly predictable within reason and the issues of crime as well as education levels can be addressed in time. It's a country under construction, so there are opportunities to build more."

A few hundred yards away, Ernest and Bella Mkhwanazi are trying to grab those opportunities.

They started cooking and selling pickled mango in their home in Alexandra, but have now opened a popular restaurant - Bellaskie - opposite the local police station, offering stewed tripe and other delicacies to a growing middle-class clientele.

"We want to be the next Kentucky Friend Tripe," jokes Mr Mkhwanazi. "The next Nandos as well. We're very optimistic."

But funding is a problem.

"We are still struggling. Africa will become very strong once leaders think of people on the ground, not themselves," he says.

"They have to support small businesses like ours. At the moment we are not getting that help. I'm 100% sure that South Africa is going in the right direction. We can see the light. But it is not coming fast enough."

For twenty-odd years the dusty streets of this infamously dangerous city have emptied in a furious hurry at sunset.

In the relentless dark, clan militias or Islamist militants would set up their roadblocks - shadowy figures illuminated by the occasional headlights of an army pick-up. Only the well-armed or the desperate would venture out.

But things are changing in the Somali capital - and in the course of a week spent travelling around the city, nothing I saw illustrates that shift more dramatically than the scenes I witnessed at 8pm.

It wasn't just a few kids hanging out near a bonfire. Or a family sitting on the steps of their home.

There were crowds - big, happy, chaotic crowds of boys, girls, men and women. I must have seen a dozen football matches on the streets.

One section had been cordoned off with some stones and was being used for driving lessons. At the roadside dozens of shops were open - their doorways flickering with multi-coloured lights.

And the reason for the change?

Streetlights.

Solar-powered, Chinese-manufactured, astonishingly bright streetlights have been erected along two main roads through the city. In all, 15 kilometres (10 miles) have been illuminated courtesy of a project funded by the Norwegian and British governments.

"I feel like I'm making a real difference in people's lives," said a smiling Abdi Mahamed Adow, the man in charge of the $400,000 project, as he showed me the start of a dusty, potholed road that gleamed far into the distance with more than a 100 brand new lampposts and their 60 watt LED lights.

After a successful pilot project, the bulk of the poles and lights went up in the course of the last few weeks.

"Now we are planning many more," said Mr Adow. Responsibility for maintaining the lights and their solar panels will soon be transferred to the city's administration, which is anxious to impress a population that has had little or no experience of local services or government for a generation.

The project has come at a time of growing optimism in Mogadishu. Despite enduring poverty, vast numbers of displaced families, corruption, unemployment, an absence of state institutions, and continuing security threats and attacks by the Islamist militants of al-Shabaab, there is a widespread and fiercely held belief that Somalia may finally be on the mend.

That belief was robustly demonstrated to me by the MBA students of the University of Somalia, who were kind enough to invite me into their classroom one afternoon this week.

Although their chancellor was worried about the spread of Islamist ideology - "Al Shabaab-ism" as he called it - by schools and rival universities funded by the Gulf states, the students were emphatic in their conviction that Somalia was enjoying an irreversible revival and that journalists like me should do more to illustrate "the good news."

But if they have lost control of many key towns these days, al-Shabab can still cause trouble.

Minutes after I'd flown into Mogadishu, a car bomb exploded up the road at a busy roundabout, killing or injuring more than 30 people.

Andrew Harding: Somalia's struggle for unity

After the dust and frenzy of the capital, Afgoye is almost shockingly green, surrounded by lush, well-irrigated fields. Trucks piled high with bananas rattle past us.

It is striking to note that most of the work in and around the town seems to be done by women - bent double in the fields, tending to cattle, and running the tiny makeshift shops that line the muddy roads.

A year ago, Afgoye was under the control of Somalia's Islamist militant group, al-Shabab, which held most of the countryside beyond Mogadishu.

But a concerted military push by Somali and African Union forces forced al-Shabab to retreat.

Today the town seems as good a place as any to judge the progress this country, with its new internationally-backed government, is making towards stability after two decades of anarchy.

Before I set out for Afgoye, Somalia's new prime minister - a genial economist named Abdi Farah Shirdon - told me: "We control most of Somalia - more than 80%. The future is very promising.

"Al-Shabab is acting as a wild card. They don't want life. They respect nothing, but I believe they have no future."

But if they have lost control of many key towns these days, al-Shabab can still cause trouble.

On Sunday, minutes after I'd flown into Mogadishu, a car bomb exploded up the road at a busy roundabout, killing or injuring more than 30 people.

For several hours, the area was strewn with blood and debris, but a huge bulldozer quickly arrived to clear the area.

Although there were enduring scenes of grief and agony in the crowded, filthy wards at the nearby Medina hospital - by the end of the day, the damage at the roundabout was indistinguishable from the general, all-engulfing mess that is Mogadishu.

I hitched a ride out to Afgoye the next morning with Ugandan peacekeepers from the African Union force, AMISOM.

Colonel Joseph Balikudembe commands the Ugandan forces, and escorted us into the muddy centre of town, where we were quickly surrounded by a well-armed, uniformed, and welcoming crowd of local Somali soldiers and policemen, together with a handful of civil and military officials.

Across the street, several members of a local clan militia lounged in the shade beside a heavy machine gun, watching us with obvious suspicion.

"We want to empower the Somalis," said Colonel Balikudembe. "We are mentoring them. When we leave they should be able to do their own affairs."

But he conceded that they had only made "a bit of progress" so far, and that it was a "fight" to get everyone with a gun into a uniform, and committed to the idea of "united" Somalia.

"This district is very good," said the district commissioner, a portly, well-dressed man named Abdulahi Abdi Ahmed.

"But we need money from the UN - we have no police station, no court, no prison."

Still, he was adamant that al-Shabab would not return to the town, insisting "we have enough soldiers to defeat them now".

I tried to talk to a group of civilians sitting nearby. There were mutterings about corruption and frustration with the new government, but policemen quickly surrounded us and the criticisms melted away.

Eventually a 24-year-old man named Ahmed Jabril pointed at the pot-holed roads and told me the new authorities were not doing enough.

"I don't have a job. The young people here don't have jobs. They finish high school. No university. They just stay at home playing football. It's disturbing my heart," he said.

But Saladeh Mohammed Usman, a large, energetic woman in a spectacularly bright pink dress, insisted the government was doing its best.

She's in charge of revenue collection for the Finance Ministry in the Lower Shabelle region, and had just driven from Mogadishu in her small white car with a couple of armed guards.

"I'm able to do this now that we have a recognised government that isn't transitional, and now that we've got some security. So now is the right time to come here and register companies and farmers and start to collect revenue. It's time for people to pay taxes again," she said emphatically.

So who will prevail in towns like Afgoye?

The forces of change and optimism like Ms Usman, or the clan militias and extremists hovering in the background, waiting for the new government to run out of money and momentum and poised to push Somalia back towards anarchy?

For now, I'd say the optimists have the edge. But it's going to be a long, precarious struggle.

Now it turns out that Malawi's President Joyce Banda didn't even write - or know about - the infamous attack on the character and charitable activities of pop star Madonna.

And yet the ongoing quarrel - the Malawian government is still accusing Madonna of lying about her charity work - strikes me as interesting and revealing. Both for what it says about changing attitudes towards aid in Africa, as well as the more familiar chaffing that occurs when pride, philanthropy, poverty and celebrity rub up against each other.

You can read the entertainingly blunt statement from Malawi's State House here - a minor classic of its kind.

It may have been unauthorised and unsolicited - the creative homework of a junior official - but its indignant tone catches something of the frustrations of a continent weary of expressing gratitude, and increasingly determined to meet the outside world as partners rather than supplicants.

It's a tricky act to pull off, of course. Especially somewhere like Malawi. The impoverished country is still heavily dependent on outside financial support, and will remain so for many years.

But a clutch of Western development officials I've been talking to all acknowledge that the "Madonna Incident" points towards a more general shift - already in progress - away from the top-down aid of past decades and towards a new focus on policy development, partnership and business.

"That old image of a white person holding a starving black child is just embarrassing these days," said one official, speaking off the record. "The emphasis is on partnership, on building resilience in communities, and on business models."

A few UN agencies and charities still wheel in celebrities to attract attention to some cause or other - Katy Perry was in Madagascar recently - but with austerity biting in Europe and elsewhere, their impact and ability to raise funds is dwindling.

It would be unfair to draw too many broad conclusions from the unfinished story of Madonna's own philanthropic involvement in Malawi - a tale complete with law suits, sackings, an angry sister of the president, allegations of theft, and several thousand girls benefiting from an education they might otherwise never have received.

But yesterday I did ring up Trevor Neilson in Los Angeles. His Global Philanthropy Group is managing Madonna's projects in Malawi. I was prompted to call after hearing him say the following on a BBC radio programme:

"Currently the president [of Malawi] has put on trial her primary political opponent for treason. You know Malawi is a country with a lot of major problems… Luckily our work in Malawi is not dependent on the Malawian government. It never has been. We're not seeking their help. We're not seeking their permission."

Mr Neilson went on to say - in reference to a legal dispute between Madonna and the woman she'd hired to run a schools project, who also happens to be President Banda's sister - that "sadly it appears that… President Banda, is using her office to pursue her sister's grudge and pursue her sister's financial interests".

Some pretty strong allegations there.

I suggested to Mr Neilson that he might have given the impression he was accusing President Banda of manipulating the courts to stifle political opposition - and by implication of running the country like a dictatorship.

He strongly denied that and admitted he didn't know much about the treason trial of people accused of involvement in an alleged coup d'état staged last year to prevent Ms Banda from taking power after the death of her predecessor.

Mr Neilson said he meant that the president was either settling a grudge or trying to "divert attention" from the trial by issuing such a "vitriolic" statement.

I have no reason to question Madonna's motives in Malawi. It's also pretty clear that President Banda's office has handled a messy situation with staggering ineptitude. I cannot offer an opinion on the president's sister, Anjimile Oponyo, although if $3.8m went missing on her watch, then clearly she has some questions to answer.

But I must say that I found Mr Neilson's sweeping comments about, and allegations against, President Banda - a woman who may have her flaws but who is widely considered one of Africa's most dynamic leaders - quite, shall we say, high-handed.

"Her word did count - I'm sure of it," Mr Kathrada told me, on hearing of the death of Baroness Thatcher.

Between 1963 and 1964, Nelson Mandela was a defendant at the Rivonia trial, accused of trying to overthrow the apartheid government.

Mr Kathrada was one of nine other men in the dock with him. The death penalty was sought by prosecutors, but the judge sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Mr Mandela eventually spent 27 years in prison. Mr Kathrada was released a few months earlier in October 1989.

After the end of apartheid and the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, Mr Kathrada sometimes took visiting delegations and VIPs on guided tours of the notorious Robben Island jail where he and Mr Mandela had been incarcerated.

"I had the opportunity to accompany [Margaret Thatcher] a few years ago," said Mr Kathrada.

"She assured me that she had played a positive role during our trial.

"We were expecting a death sentence. We were well aware that there was all sorts of pressure from South Africa and abroad - pressure from people not necessarily agreeing with" the ANC's policies, he said.

At the time, Mrs Thatcher was a frontbench MP in Harold Macmillan's government.

"I'm not interested in whether she was prime minister or whatever," said Mr Kathrada, when I quizzed him on the likelihood that Baroness Thatcher was personally involved in any behind-the-scenes diplomatic pressure on South Africa's apartheid government.

"I had no reason to doubt what she was saying and it was good to hear she played a role."

Baroness Thatcher was better known for her strong opposition to sanctions against the apartheid government, and for describing the African National Congress in 1987 as a terrorist organisation.

Mr Mandela did not meet her on his first visit to London in 1990 after his release, but Mr Kathrada insisted that no grudge was held.

"We were quite aware [that she'd called us terrorists] but we had forgiven our oppressors, and Mrs Thatcher wasn't one of our oppressors," Mr Kathrada said.

"Once we'd forgiven our oppressors - the national government and individuals - we didn't find it difficult to forgive everybody who had different views from us."

It was a call-in show - on a topic that is on many minds here these days: the fate of a 94-year-old man lying in a hospital bed in Pretoria, and the fate of South Africa once he is gone.

For years people here have been understandably reluctant to discuss the death of Nelson Mandela - out of a profound respect for the man who, more than any other, steered this country from apartheid to democracy.

But the passage of time, and the health scares of recent months - have nudged the issue away from the shadows.

The man on the radio was a black South African from a poor township, and he was articulating a belief that has gained a small level of currency here: that Mr Mandela's passing will unleash not just grief and nostalgia, but a violent rage against the poverty and inequality that still exists here, two decades after the end of white minority rule.

There is, certainly, anger in the country.

Listen to the programme

Download the programme

Recent headlines have highlighted violent industrial action, the massacre at the Marikana mine, the death of a man dragged behind a police van and the enduringly high crime statistics.

The theory goes that - even from his hospital bed - Mr Mandela exerts some sort of restraint on a turbulent nation, almost a decade after he retired from public life.

It is a theory most South Africans find - quite rightly - both offensive and absurd.

The next two callers on the radio show said as much.

Imagine Britain in the mid-1960s still anxious about the broader implications of Winston Churchill's failing health.

No, in almost every way South Africa is already well into the post-Mandela era.

Other presidents have come and gone.

And yet the jitters here speak to a broader theme - of a grand, miraculous nation aware it is poised to close a defining chapter in its history.

There are not many heroes left these days, so people cling to Mr Mandela like a precious relic.

And they cling too to the sense of drama, of high stakes, that characterised those years, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when South Africa really did stand on the precipice - the dangers of a racial civil war, of total collapse - were raw and real.

Today's headlines can still leave you speechless - the corruption allegations that cling to President Jacob Zuma, the extraordinary levels of sexual violence.

There is a new crisis here every week.

The South African writer, Rian Malan, put it well a few years ago, when he tried to explain to a foreign audience why he could not imagine living anywhere else.

"You don't understand. It's boring where you are," he wrote.

Yet, when you peer behind some of the headlines, things can seem less dramatic.

Take Oscar Pistorius.

Yes, he shot his girlfriend dead. Perhaps he was afraid of burglars.

You could see it all as another sign that a violent country is going to the dogs or you could marvel at the huge new Pretoria estate the athlete lived in, surrounded by other huge new middle class suburbs, where race is no longer such a big deal, and younger South Africans worry more about their mobile phones than about what life will be like after Mr Mandela.

The drive from Mr Pistorius' home to Johannesburg is an eye-opener. In the space of a few years the two cities have essentially merged. For the whole 40-minute drive new business parks and suburbs line the motorway.

It was perhaps fitting that a senior government minister chose this week - with Mr Mandela still in hospital - to declare a decisive break with the past.

We must stop "looking over our shoulder, we are responsible ourselves", said the Planning Minister Trevor Manuel.

He urged a gathering of civil servants to stop blaming apartheid for everything that was still going wrong in South Africa.

It was time to deliver.

The scars of apartheid are still real here. They will not be easily shrugged off.

Inequality endures and the economy is not growing anywhere near as fast as it needs to, unlike so many other corners of this continent.

But as South Africa waits to hear news, good or bad, about Nelson Mandela it is slowly coming to terms with the fact that its heroic years are over.

It may still be a dramatic, exciting, scary place.

But it is becoming ordinary too.

How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent:

BBC Radio 4: A 30-minute programme on Saturdays, 11:30 BST.

Second 30-minute programme on Thursdays, 11:00 BST (some weeks only).

Listen online or download the podcast

BBC World Service:

Hear daily 10-minute editions Monday to Friday, repeated through the day, also available to listen online.

Read more or explore the archive at the programme website.

That is not to say that South Africa does not involve itself in the affairs of Africa, or send troops on multi-national peacekeeping operations in places like Darfur in Sudan.

But it does so - at least in the minds of the public - at arm's length, and without any great sense of scrutiny.

But now this country has been genuinely stunned by the news that 13 of its soldiers were killed last month during a chaotic rebellion in the Central African Republic (CAR).

More to the point, people are starting to ask some unusually pointed, angry questions about exactly what those soldiers were doing in CAR and why they had not been pulled out when the security situation began to crumble.

The extraordinary allegation, spelled out here, is that far from taking part in a selfless training operation they were part of a murky business deal involving South Africa's governing African National Congress, and the now-toppled CAR President Francois Bozize.

"We are not used to seeing our soldiers coming home in body bags," said Nick Dawes, editor of the Mail and Guardian newspaper that is asking some of the toughest questions of the South African authorities.

"People are very disturbed. I think the government and ruling party are waking up to what a serious problem they've created - which is why there was such a hysterical reaction today."

The "hysteria" Mr Dawes mentions refers both to the ANC's furious statement that his newspaper was "pissing on the graves" of South Africa's dead soldiers, and to President Jacob Zuma's indignant remarks given at a memorial service for the 13 men.

It was hardly the occasion for a detailed rebuttal, and President Zuma did not offer one.

He insisted that the soldiers were "heroes" who had died "for a worthy cause… promoting peace and stability" on the continent.

But Mr Zuma also went much further - explicitly questioning the right of journalists and others to probe the state on matters of security.

"The problem in South Africa is that everyone wants to run the country," he said, arguing that the ANC - with its hefty parliamentary majority - should be "given space to do its work".

Some will nod their heads at that. Others will find Mr Zuma's comments alarmingly self-serving.

And many will, surely, agree that the best way to honour the memory of those 13 dead soldiers is to make absolutely sure that South Africa finds out the truth about the military deployment in CAR.

Did South Africa's parliament - ANC and opposition - fail in its duty of oversight?

Have the distinctions between the government's duties and the narrower interests of the ANC become dangerously blurred?

Has the leadership of the South African armed forces become overtly politicised?

And did shady business deals in an isolated, unstable, mineral-rich African country (sounds familiar) lead to something that may one day be held up as South Africa's worst military scandal since the fall of apartheid?

We were following a group of about eight activists for the MDC who were putting up posters calling on Zimbabweans to vote "Yes" to the new draft constitution in Saturday's referendum.

Sten Zvorwadza, who hopes to take over as the next MDC MP in Mbare, was wearing a smart grey suit and waving a copy of the constitution while his colleagues used a bucket of home-made glue to put up their posters.

When the first poster was ripped down, Mr Zvorwadza condemned "Zanu thugs" who have routinely broken up MDC rallies and meetings in the area.

But he and the team continued to put up more posters on the walls of some old blocks of flats, watched by a few dozen people.

Suddenly a woman came charging towards us from a nearby market stall and ripped down two posters.

"Who are you? Why are you putting those posters up? Put them where you live. I'm not going to allow you to do that here," she screamed.

Within seconds, she was punching one of the women campaigners. Another woman joined in.

Eventually they were separated, but then two or three men began to punch and kick Mr Zvorwadza, and throw water at him.

"Watch out… watch out!" they said menacingly, brandishing glass bottles at him and ordering him to leave.

As he slowly tried to move away, an increasingly large and agitated crowd turned on me and cameraman Stuart Phillips.

They tried to grab our camera, then threw buckets of dirty water at us. Finally two or three men began to punch us on the arms and back.

The urge to run was almost overwhelming. But we feared that would provoke even more violence.

Sticking close to Mr Zvorwadza, we walked back towards our car, with the crowd following close behind.

Mr Zvorwadza said they were shouting: "Next time we will kill you."

We became separated from some of the other MDC campaigners.

Mr Zvorwadza said he feared they might have been abducted or killed, but a few minutes later we met them in their van back in the centre of Harare.

One of the men had a gash on his hand, a cut lip and cheek and bruises on his head. It was clear he had been badly beaten.

"Unfortunately supporters of Zanu-PF are very violent, and don't support the cause that the country is fighting to bring peace after so much violence," said Mr Zvorwadza.

He said he was planning to report the incident at a local police station but fully expected that he would be arrested, rather than his attackers.

"The entire people really long for peace and democracy and free and fair elections, but Zanu-PF supporters - headed by President Robert Mugabe - continue to abuse Zimbabweans as you have just witnessed," he said, urging Mr Mugabe "to uphold the rule of law and make sure impunity is not promoted".

The MDC later said the police had refused to accept a report made by those injured in the attack unless they first removed their party T-shirts.

The whole incident lasted only a few minutes, but it was a chilling reminder of the violence that lurks very close to the surface here in Zimbabwe.

At his recent birthday party, President Robert Mugabe cut a rather lonely figure.

"All my friends gone," he said to the assembled guests. "Also relatives gone - and I continue to linger on."

Zimbabwe's leader is 89 now. Most of the politicians in his coalition cabinet are a generation or two younger than him.

But there is no indication that Mr Mugabe is planning to retire.

On Saturday, millions of Zimbabweans are voting on a new constitution. It has been a long, expensive, bitterly contested process to get the draft together.

But the main political parties here are - for once - all in agreement, and campaigning for a "Yes" vote.

Tendai Biti - a gruff, brooding, impressive man who was once beaten, jailed and accused of treason by President Mugabe's security forces - told me the new constitution was "world class".

He called it the "midwife" to a brand new Zimbabwe.

Mr Biti is the finance minister and a senior figure in the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), the former opposition that was brought into a power-sharing government after the last elections in 2008 were derailed by violence.

If it gets approved - and there is not much doubt about that - the constitution will spell out people's rights, devolve some power and set up a system of checks and balances in order to keep Zimbabwe's elected leaders in line.

It will also give President Mugabe the chance to stay in office - with more or less the same powers that he has now - for another 10 years.

Which is perhaps why the referendum has not exactly captured the public's imagination here.

Instead, everyone is craning their necks to look beyond it, to the elections that may or may not take place in July.

As Tendai Biti himself acknowledged, a constitution - however world class - is just a bit of paper. "It won't stop me from killing you," as he put it.

It is hard to know how much support President Mugabe still enjoys here. His Zanu-PF party is highly organised, well-funded and extremely good on the campaign trail.

Listen to the programme

Download the programme

But opinion polls in Zimbabwe do not count for much. Too many people shake their heads and refuse to answer.

And it is that quiet shake of the head that still strikes me most about this country.

Plenty has changed here. Hyperinflation has gone. Schools are open. The violence and chaos that stalked Zimbabwe for so long have subsided.

But fear remains. The instinct to whisper, and look away.

No-one was ever punished for the torture and killings that swept the country in 2008 and, whatever the new constitution says, everyone knows that the police, the military and the state media remain in the absolute control of President Mugabe and his party.

I took a drive out of Harare and into the countryside. Dark green fields. Bright yellow corn. Red earth and impossibly blue skies. Like a stunning, almost gaudy oil painting.

In a dip between two hills, tens of thousands of people were living in mostly makeshift shacks. I will not say where because I promised the headmaster of a local school that I would not.

He was tall, dignified, and scared. "The security services - they are clever - they will find me out," he said. "It is dangerous to talk."

His tiny private school, made of rusting sheets of corrugated metal, was struggling - too many orphans, no money, no textbooks.

He scoffed at the idea that the past few years of political stability had brought any sort of relief to poorer Zimbabweans.

"I am a churchgoer," he said. "We are brought up to believe that our leaders are appointed by God. But we are suffering. Education. Health. It's not okay."

There is still some optimism here that Zimbabwe can pull off a free and fair election later this year.

"Why not?" said Tendai Biti indignantly. "There is nothing in our DNA as Zimbabweans that says we can't."

In the lobby of our hotel back in Harare, I ran into the South African government delegation that has played a key role in nudging Zimbabwe's politicians towards the constitution and elections.

The team leader, Lindiwe Zulu, sounded tired. "We've been coming in and out of this place for almost four years now. Zimbabwe needs to start looking after its own development."

She called the elections a big hurdle, but afterwards she said, "I hope one day I'll be coming here for a holiday."

How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent :

BBC Radio 4: A 30-minute programme on Saturdays, 11:30 BST.

Second 30-minute programme on Thursdays, 11:00 BST (some weeks only).

Listen online or download the podcast

BBC World Service:

Hear daily 10-minute editions Monday to Friday, repeated through the day, also available to listen online.

Read more or explore the archive at the programme website.

Speaking to BBC News in Cape Town in his first interview since leaving Antarctica last week, Sir Ranulph said that, while he considered the frostbite "a total mystery," an earlier annual medical check-up back in the UK had indicated that he "was on the verge... of type-two diabetes".

A South African vascular surgeon, examining his damaged left hand this week, had, he said, "suggested that if that's a recent change in my bodily system it… could have gone for any area in my body that was susceptible to circulation changes".

Further tests will be required back in the UK to confirm the theory.

Sir Ranulph said it was "a huge blow" to be forced to pull out of the six-man Commonwealth team on the first ever attempt to make a winter crossing of Antarctica, but insisted there was no point "crying over spilt milk, or split fingers.

"You've got to move on. The expedition has not failed. It's about to set out on schedule… It's got the best team in the world. This one, make no mistake, is going to succeed."

Asked if he thought his 68-year-old body, or his sponsors, might now force an end to his distinguished, but famously punishing career, Sir Ranulph said: "I can't see this being my last expedition. There's no reason why it should be.

"Obviously future expeditions will have to be in an area where my very annoying left hand doesn't get in the way. So that will change."

He described the moment he realised that five years of meticulous preparation for a staggeringly dangerous journey had just ended for him.

He was skiing alone, just over two hours from his colleagues, on a flat but rutted track in a white-out - meaning zero-visibility - and testing some new equipment, when he noticed the snow had loosened the bindings on his skis and "one was slipping all over the damned place.

"I had to tighten them up. I tried with the outer gloves and couldn't do it. I had to take the [outer and] inner gloves off - no alternative - and use my hands. But that's OK. Minus 30 or warmer - that's the norm."

It took less than 20 minutes for him to secure the bindings, but then "I suddenly realised that one of [my hands] had gone… the other one which also had the mitts off was perfectly alright.

"Once you see that it's like wood when you tap the skis I knew that I was in trouble and would have to get back."

With his left hand useless, he struggled slowly back to his team-mates in their vehicles, already aware that "the situation had suddenly, unexpectedly and with a high degree of frustration reached a situation where that hand wasn't going to be any good for -40C let along -80".

The decision to leave Antarctica was, Sir Ranulph insisted, a quick and easy one.

"It's common sense. Do you go for the emotional stuff or the facts? The fact is that me not being there will have no impact" on the mission.

"I don't think anyone in the world could get together a team as efficient as the one we have right now."

"I said to the team, 'What do you want to do?', and every single member of the team said… they wanted to carry on" without him, he said, joking that their supplies of food, toothpaste and loo paper "at the crudest level… would go a bit further".

Sir Ranulph now plans to return to the UK to play a very different role.

"I won't be on the sidelines. I'll be in the centre of the spider's web… making maximum use of my talents of raising money."

The expedition is aiming to raise £10m ($15m) for the Seeing is Believing charity, to fight preventable blindness. There's also a big educational and scientific programme for him to promote.

I met Sir Ranulph at an apartment complex just outside Cape Town. His left hand was heavily bandaged, and he said he was taking strong painkillers that were enabling him to sleep.

Ten years ago, he famously used a fretsaw to cut off the tips of his fingers on the same hand after they'd been damaged by frostbite.

"I understand why the Gestapo used to use fingers and toes to get what they wanted out of torturing people," he said, attempting to describe the pain that pushed him towards DIY surgery.

In person Sir Ranulph comes across as a strikingly modest, canny and straightforward man - reluctant to dwell on his own frustrations - 50% of all his past expeditions had failed, he pointed out.

As we struggled to reach his apartment and ended up getting stuck on the emergency staircase trying to reach the right floor, he laughed at the irony of a great explorer apparently unable to find his own bed.

Sir Ranulph will find out more about the damage to his fingers when he returns to the UK. He's hoping not to lose "more than an inch" to the frostbite."

Will he be able to use his left hand in the future? "I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not," he said.

It stares out from a dozen mounted photographs, and on two giant portraits sitting on the worktop in the small printing business that Cecil Myers runs from a converted garage.

There is no trace of Oscar Pistorius here. In a recent newspaper interview, Mr Myers said the Paralympic athlete could "rot in hell".

In the months before the model was killed, Ms Steenkamp lived with the Myers family, sleeping in a small upstairs bedroom, cooking pasta for Mr Myers, surprising her hosts with gifts of chocolate, and gossiping late into the night with Mr Myers' daughters - and Reeva's close friends - Gina and Kim.

"My dad is a mess. He used to call Reeva his favourite daughter. I think he feels because she was living here, that he didn't protect her, and so I think he feels like he lost a daughter and we feel like we lost a sister," said Gina, a make-up artist who met Reeva four years ago.

"She texted us [from Pistorius's house] that night. You look back and ask - why didn't we just say 'come home'?"

Mr Myers, Kim and his son David were called to identify Ms Steenkamp's body hours after she was shot.

Today, Mr Myers declined to be interviewed, saying he felt unable to control his feelings or his tongue, but told me he had nearly broken down again when Ms Steenkamp's car was removed from their driveway this morning.

"I want Reeva's voice to be heard," said Gina, who admitted that she felt her friend was being overlooked by the frantic media focus on Oscar Pistorius.

"At the end of the day Reeva was killed. I want people to know her heart," she said.

"This was going to be her year to shine. She became part of the family here."

Gina declined to discuss her opinions about the shooting, or the upcoming murder trial.

She said she believed Ms Steenkamp was happy, both in her relationship with Mr Pistorius and more generally.

She said that Ms Steenkamp, despite being a beautiful woman with many male admirers, "could handle herself - she was a strong girl" - and not the sort of person to tolerate an abusive partner.

Gina said Ms Steenkamp was romantic and sentimental, and had only had two relationships - one lasting several years - in the time she had known her.

The Myers family had helped Ms Steenkamp to compile a collage of photographs of her and her new boyfriend to take with her as a Valentine's Day gift for Oscar Pistorius that night.

There is a largely unspoken, but increasingly clear sense of two rival camps now lining up behind Mr Pistorius and Ms Steenkamp - and of an emerging proxy media war, waged by public relations companies, friends and some relatives.

Tuesday's news that reports of Mr Pistorius' "private memorial service" had been leaked to the media has been greeted with suspicion and disgust by friends of Ms Steenkamp's, who believe the athlete's supporters are waging an unseemly campaign to rebuild his reputation ahead of the murder trial.

Gina and her mother Desi are both planning to attend the trial in order to "represent" Ms Steenkamp.

"I hope by the end of the trial truth comes out and justice prevails.

"I have faith in Reeva - she'll make sure that justice prevails," said Gina with something close to a chuckle.

Perhaps he is being punished enough by losing the woman he told friends he thought might become his wife.

Having sat just over a metre away from him for the last four days in court, I can tell you he is a broken man.

But still, it is hard to imagine he will walk away from a trial without some form of sanction, and with his life and career changed forever by four shots fired into a toilet door.

Perhaps he's being punished enough by losing the woman he told friends he thought might become his wife.

Having sat just over a metre away from him for the last four days in court, I can tell you he is a broken man.

But still it is hard to imagine he will walk away from a trial without some form of sanction, and with his life and career changed forever by four shots fired into a toilet door.

Inside court: Pistorius bail verdict

As the tension and the heat inside the overcrowded courtroom built up, Magistrate Desmond Nair made his painstaking way through a summary of the evidence and arguments - with the occasional digression into legal history - without seeming to give prosecution or defence a particular reason for confidence.

It was only in the final few seconds of his ruling - having conceded that Oscar Pistorius was not a flight risk or a danger, but having also raised doubts about his testimony and concluded that prosecution and defence had effectively fought each other to a draw on the central issue of whether the athlete had planned to kill his girlfriend or intended to shoot a burglar - that Mr Pistorius seem to understand that he would soon be a free man.

But there was no relief in the athlete's face. His shoulders shook and he slumped forward on the bench, trying to contain his sobs, as his father reached forward to put a hand on his back.

It seems there can be no good days for Oscar Pistorius right now - just variations on a theme of grief, and anguish - whatever version of the events in that now famous bathroom you choose to believe.

So what now?

For all the drama, twists and revelations of the past week - and the extraordinary level of detail and debate that surfaced - it's important to remember that this was just a bail hearing, a small step on the road towards the murder trial.

All the key forensic and ballistic information has yet to be revealed. Months of painstaking work lie ahead for prosecution and defence.

The prosecution's case may not have been helped by the disastrous performance of the lead detective, Hilton Botha, who squirmed and backtracked under cross-examination.

But in a way, that may prove to be beside the point.

It's probably fair to assume that the prosecution team never expected to win the argument against bail. Instead their strategy was to force Oscar Pistorius to show his hand, giving a full account of his version of events in order to counter the premeditated murder charge raised at the bail hearing.

Now the prosecution, with a brand new high-profile detective leading the investigation, has the luxury of months to pick apart the athlete's sworn statement and measure it against the forensic evidence that will soon appear.

Interestingly, the prosecutor and magistrate today both raised, in abstract terms, the possibility of the charges against Oscar Pistorius being reduced from murder to culpable homicide - something which could mean a fine or suspended sentence rather than a long jail term.

We are a long way from that happening, but given the international spotlight now focused on South Africa's police and judicial system, there will be pressure to ensure that this case does not drag on, or do anything to discredit this country.

My own view is that, even by his own account of events, Oscar Pistorius displayed the most extreme recklessness in firing blindly into a closed door, without even the most basic appreciation of who or what might lie behind it.

Perhaps he's being punished enough by losing the woman he told friends he thought might become his wife.

Having sat just over a metre away from him for the last four days in court, I can tell you he is a broken man. But still it is hard to imagine he will walk away from a trial without some form of sanction, and with his life and career changed forever by four shots fired into a toilet door.

Perhaps he's being punished enough by losing the woman he told friends he thought might become his wife.

Having sat just over a metre away from him for the last four days in court, I can tell you he is a broken man. But still it is hard to imagine he will walk away from a trial without some form of sanction, and with his life and career changed forever by four shots fired into a toilet door.

Inside court: Pistorius bail verdict

Exhibit A is, of course, Detective Hilton Botha, newly dismissed from his role as lead investigator in the Reeva Steenkamp murder case.

It was almost painful to watch his testimony to the court - selective, speculative, and clearly loyal to the prosecution - being picked apart by a highly paid defence lawyer until the detective was forced to concede that all his bold assumptions about Oscar Pistorius's guilt were, on the current evidence, unsustainable.

But between those uncomfortable admissions lay another story, of an underpaid policeman arriving for an important job without the necessary equipment - shoe covers - to avoid contaminating the murder scene, and without enough "connections" - his word - or colleagues, to ensure that the most basic evidence could be processed in time for the bail hearing.

He had no records yet of Reeva Steenkamp's mobile phone calls, no information about the post-mortem, no forensic or ballistic information beyond a few informal conversations with experts at the scene.

Other evidence about alleged "testosterone" proved wrong and the defence said its own investigators had found a bullet cartridge clumsily overlooked by the police.

Given that this is perhaps the most high-profile murder investigation that South Africa has seen in years, it makes you wonder what happens in other, more ordinary, cases.

It also makes you begin to understand why, for instance, the conviction rate for alleged rapists is pitifully low, and why so many police dockets are reported to "disappear" from the files, allowing suspects to walk free.

The suspiciously timed announcement that attempted murder charges have been reinstated against Detective Botha lends itself to speculation, both about the politicised power struggles within the state prosecutors' office, and about a national police force scrambling to save face under the glare of the international media.

But to me it also speaks to South Africa's notorious wealth gap, and to a culture where lavishly paid senior officials - be they politicians, police bureaucrats or defence attorneys - appear to live in a very different world from the underfunded, underequipped foot soldiers struggling to get a grip on this country's enduring crime problem.

The timing of the reinstatement of the charges is still unclear and the National Prosecuting Authority says they are in no way connected to the athlete's murder case. It is curious, though, that the information about Det Botha was not provided to the Pistorius defence team or, apparently, to the prosecution.

With reporters and cameramen racing up and down stairs to secure a precious wristband allowing access - an orderly line outside at Pretoria Magistrate's Court C quickly turned into a shoving match as confused officials struggled to come up with a plan to determine who should get the few seats available inside the red brick courtroom.

Reeva's friend says victim told her she would "probably say yes" if #OscarPistorius asked her to marry him.