To Russia with anything but love...

Who said this country has Third World tendencies? Me. But after a Damascus experience, I’ve changed my tune. It happened on Nevsky Prospect, the main street in St Petersburg, in Russia. Petrograd, which begat Stalingrad, which begat St Petersburg, is a huge metropolis, but one with few public toilets.

After four hours of sightseeing, a great need for ablutions arose, but to the consternation of the older men, who by then were doing spastic dances, the nearest toilet was a two-kilometre walk. And the toilet, housed in a tiny gift shop, turned out to be a one-man, one-woman cubicle. The men then changed to the jig. And the ladies had more time for browsing while queuing.

That’s when the revelation hit me that South Africa is no banana country. Here toilets pose no problem – if the need arises you do it on the spot, no questions asked. And the existing toilets are a source of income for entrepreneurs who yank out the taps and sell them to scrap merchants.

By limiting the number of toilets, the Ruskies have lost out on a lucrative trade.

However, they have old-fashioned trams running on steel tracks, so if shrewd operators use their heads, like our guys do, they’d be pulling them out and selling the steel back to the gullible West at discounted prices.

Sadly, our previous government dumped trams, so the new generation is deprived of a money spinner. But they make up by filching power cables that put trains and robots out of action. The positive spin-off is that speeding motorists are forced to relax at intersections.

Then, during our sojourn in the UK, we spotted a dated trend. Motorists stick religiously to the speed limit and allow for a huge gap between cars. This adds many extra hours to road trips. Here we get to the job and home by putting foot.

And there, drunk drivers lose their licences – and their jobs – when they’re caught. Here we bribe metro cops and we’re home and dry.

So don’t tell me we’re a Third World country. In fact, we’re a world of our own, with our own value system which came into effect soon after Nelson Mandela left the scene.

This was revealed to me on Nevsky. Now I know how St Paul felt after seeing the light.