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Decades in the Libyan diplomatic corps have taught Abdullah Abdussalam Alzubeidi the fine art of discretion.

"To speak out and survive has not been easy," he said, still weighing his words carefully at a news conference in Pretoria.

Mr Alzubeidi has been a fixture in South Africa since 1995. He's the longest-serving ambassador here and the "Dean" of the diplomatic circuit.

But this morning, he emerged from the shadows of tact and protocol to denounce Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and to insist, "we should now fear nobody".

You could tell it wasn't easy. Mr Alzubeidi initially suggested merely that Col Gaddafi should "consider the interests of the country". After a little prompting, he acknowledged that he was calling on him "to resign".

One journalist - hunting for a meatier sound bite - suggested the ambassador might be "disgusted" by the colonel's recent behaviour. Mr Alzubeidi, urbane to a fault, seemed to shudder like a gentleman whose tailor has suggested brown shoes with pinstripes.
So would the ambassador himself step down? He had considered that option, he said, but decided his priority was to serve the many Libyan citizens who depended on the embassy for support. Besides - "to whom" should he offer his resignation? It's a reasonable question and Mr Alzubeidi implied that other Libyan ambassadors who had publically quit had really done no such thing. "The others just said it," he explained.

Mr Alzubeidi seemed reluctant to explore his own complicity in the regime that he was now ready to reject. "Diplomats are like soldiers," he said, quickly denying any knowledge of arms sales, or mercenaries, or much else to do with Gaddafi's government. But he acknowledged that "many of us should not have served" and - while admitting to "constant self-censorship" - hinted that he had tried "in our own private ways" to criticise the regime before.

For now, then, the Libyan mission here will remain open and in a state of limbo - unfunded, answering to no government, and waiting for "the leadership to take the right decisions".

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For years the rest of Africa has treated Colonel Muammar Gaddafi like an embarrassing uncle - the sort who arrives for Christmas lunch five hours late and insists on rambling through a long-winded speech, but then makes up for it all by tucking a £50 note into your top pocket, or paying off your mortgage.

It's that combination of embarrassment and generosity - with a heavy emphasis on the latter - which must surely explain the continent's regarding events in Libya and the fate of its "king of kings". Plus, in some of the more opulent state houses, a reticence.

The African Union - chaired until recently by Col Gaddafi himself - waited on the sidelines for days before daintily suggesting "dialogue and consultation", while South Africa's government left it to the governing African National Congress (ANC) to deplore "the unprecedented deaths". Only gallant little Botswana has

The details of much of Libya's south-bound generosity are shrouded in secrecy. "Lots of dollars, MIGs, aircraft servicing, cheap oil and training," was how a well-connected source in Harare described the nature of the colonel's long-standing support for President Robert Mugabe.
How many other sub-Saharan states can claim the same In return, it seems, some African countries may have allowed - or perhaps even deployed - mercenaries to help out in Tripoli.
I'm always a little wary of the "foreign sniper" rumours that crop up in almost every conflict - in Chechnya there was endless talk about Baltic death squads.
But this time the reports
So - where are these mercenaries from? Sudan? Niger? Zimbabwe? Chad? And if Col Gaddafi runs out of options, how many African soldiers will ever make it home?

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The setting is superb, the menu extensive, and the service charmingly conscientious. It is only the padlocks, the uniforms, and the waiters' tattoos that give the game away.

Welcome to set cosily inside the perimeter of one of South Africa's most notorious jails.

The prison is nestled in something close to a cliche of pastoral charm, a short drive south of Cape Town. Vineyards in front. Table Mountain round the corner. Pillowy clouds shouldering through the gaps in a crescent of steep hillsides.

High walls denied Mandela any opportunity to enjoy the views. "A modern face but a primitive heart," he wrote of his "world of concrete". But he was permitted to construct his own patch of nature - a garden, providing "onions, aubergines, cabbage, cauliflower, beans, spinach, carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, beetroot, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries and much more", to the prison kitchen and to the warders.

Today, we drive though the main gates with barely a glance from the guards - and no reservation. "We're here for lunch," we declare - and are casually directed past the wire fences of the low-security block and over to the warder's recreation centre.

Our waiter, Jodi, is a thin young man with a shaved head, quick smile, and the slightly stooped walk of someone expecting to be clipped round the ear at any moment. The restaurant is busy. Lots of decidedly plump prison wardens, and plenty of civilians. The place has been open to the public for many years now - part of a rehabilitation - and caters for weddings and other functions.

Gang tattoos

"We get to work here when our sentence is nearly finished," says Jodi, after taking our orders. He's doing two years for stealing a motorbike. It's not his first time inside, "but it's going to be my last". It was during his six years here that Nelson Mandela was finally allowed physical contact with his family - "it had been 21 years since I had even touched my wife's hand."

At our table, Lele - a tour guide from a local township - whispers that the extensive tattoos that disappear under Jodi's sleeves mark him out as a member of the notorious "I got them done in here," says Jodi, sounding a little sheepish.

Notorious for housing Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada and other struggle heroes, Pollsmoor may soon have a different, though hardly equal, claim to fame.

If - and there are a lot of ifs - Shrien Dewani is extradited to South Africa to face charges that he murdered his wife a few miles down the road from the prison while on honeymoon last November, and if he is denied bail when he gets here, there's a possibility that he might spend some time at Pollsmoor during his trial. If he's found guilty, then Pollsmoor is one of several prisons in the area to which he might be sent.

Over the coming months we're likely to hear plenty of arguments about the state of South African justice, and conditions in its prisons, if - as expected - Mr Dewani and his lawyers continue to contest his extradition from Britain.

I'll focus on the issue of justice in a future blog. As for prison conditions: "It's ok here," says Jodi, quietly, as he brings our main courses. In fact I've heard the broadest range of opinions on this subject over the past days and months: local defence lawyers scoffing at the idea that the issue is even relevant, and insisting Dewani "will get special treatment - the guards will treat him like a celebrity"; a campaigner warning of "widespread torture", in South African jails; an ex-con, gang member and former get-away expert, who told me anyone with money could bribe the guards and live a life of luxury - although they'd still have to be careful "after the guards leave, and the doors close for the night".

We tuck into our lunch. Steak, chicken salad, fish and chips. No evidence of any fresh prison vegetables "a la Mandela". My deep fried fish manages to be both soggy and tough. A prison guard walks past, swinging a set of keys on a long string. I ask if I can take a picture with our waiter. He shakes his head: "No. Security."

A memorable lunch. But not quite five star.

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How far will the ideals and convulsions sweeping through Arab states penetrate into sub-Saharan Africa? Khartoum has already felt a few ripples. So who's next - if anyone?

, I think we can rule out Somalia. Mogadishu, in its eccentric way, may be more plugged into cyberspace that most cities on the continent. But how do you rebel against violent anarchy?

. But the army seem unlikely to change sides, and .

Further south, Zimbabwe's ever-embattled prime minister . But the police and army - still loyal to President Robert Mugabe - seem fully capable of preventing any awkward gatherings in Harare. As one political analyst here put it to me - "people in Zim know the police will shoot them".

Which brings us - with plenty of omissions - to the far end of the continent. South Africa is nothing like Egypt, but the Arab flu has given local commentators here plenty to sneeze about. Political commentator Moeletsi Mbeki . Another commentator, Jacob Dlamini, . But this handy website offers a different, statistics-based, and sometimes more optimistic perspective. One of its authors, Robert Mattes, cites the "safety valve of elections", both here and across much of the continent, as a key inoculating factor against Arab-style unrest. South Africa is often gripped by violent protests linked to poverty and service delivery failures, but "people don't question the legitimacy of the government here. It's just that the government isn't listening," says Professor Mattes.

By the way - if you haven't already, do read this excellent analysis by a colleague of the social dynamics behind what's going on in Egypt and elsewhere. Of the 20 points listed, how many are now widespread in sub-Saharan Africa? Not enough, I reckon.

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We're standing in a neglected-looking building, surrounded by warehouses, on a drab street in the heart of central Johannesburg.

From the outside, you'd struggle to guess that this is South Africa's and Africa's - possibly the whole southern hemisphere's - biggest rare and used bookshop.

Only a rooftop billboard, eight storeys up, advertises this as "Collectors Treasury."

So how many books then? "Two million," says Geoff, 62 - a figure that includes maps, documents and a dusty jumble of other "items."

He first opened shop above a garage in 1974, with his brother Jonathan and his wife Jenny. They moved - what a job that must have been - to the current location in 1991, at a time when the city centre was being abandoned by most big businesses because of rising fears about crime.

Geoff points off towards a cluttered corner. "Take the stairs down there - explore..."

You could get lost in here for days. Eight jumbled floors of reading. I drift through a maze of tall, packed shelves - each buttressed from the floor by more stacks of books, some breaking like waves, and scattering across the carpets.

There is, or was, a system in place - but finding it requires an archaeologist's persistence. Aeschylus peeps out from behind a pile of trashy novels. A thick wedge of 1970s vinyl records leads the way to an impressive collection of hardbacks devoted to Caucasian carpet weaving. On a nearby shelf, Just William stares out at me. There's a whole room full of first editions.

It is all very... British. "But that's changing, slowly," says Geoff. Five years ago he reckons 2% of his clientele was black. Today, it's about 10%. A sharp rise. He laments the lack of any similar increase in black authors. "There are no more being published now than during the second half of apartheid," he says - at least when it comes to fiction.

Outside, the city is changing faster. Geoff scoffs at the "crime capital" reputation that has stuck to Johannesburg. "I've had no real problems. It's mostly a media creation anyway," he says, pointedly, lamenting the way "the white population has been weaned away from the city centre."

"But things are changing. We've got Arts on Main," - a chic series of refurbished warehouses-turned-galleries where I've just been for an excellent lunch - "there's a boutique hotel. More accommodation is being built in the city centre. The inevitable process of regeneration - as in all big cities - is underway," he says confidently. Buying the building may turn out to have been an extremely sound investment.

I share his optimism. It's going to be a long, uneven haul, but there does seem something almost inevitable - our almost instinct, almost true, as a famous librarian once wrote - about the steady transformation of the downtown area. You can feel the momentum and the logic of it all. Come and browse for yourself.

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Of course it makes the headlines - who wouldn't be intrigued by the honeymoon murder of Anni Dewani - the police investigation, the looming extradition battle, and even the blizzard of speculation, prejudice and bluster from the likes of

I was in Cape Town recently and got an earful from the lawyer representing Zola Tonga - the driver who has already begun an 18-year prison sentence after confessing to a role in an alleged plot to kill Ms Dewani.

"Insulting, demeaning... unpatriotic drivel," was the gist of William Da Grass's opinion of the often-breathless media coverage of the murder investigation, the state of Cape Town's prisons, and its judicial system. "I'm surprised British people come here on holiday... if that's the way they view us."

But let's put this in perspective. When it comes to South - and southern - Africa's reputation abroad, I suspect this one unusual murder - regardless of who did it - will have almost no impact, long or short-term.

Vastly more important image-wise - and every other "wise" - and notably absent from most headlines, is this week's in Cape Town - an annual chance for the global heavyweights of the industry to assess the state of South Africa's investment climate, amid growing concerns about and the government's often stated, but often questioned, commitment to resist calls for the nationalisation of the

Then there's Zimbabwe - with some companies talking of a turn-around, but with an election pending and

Africa may be basking in its new reputation for economic growth, and the diamond industry may be talking up a post-recession bounce in the luxury market, but the mining industry here is.

One of the biggest players weighed in today, urging the government to avoid "the road to ruin" and calling for In a country that depends so heavily on mineral wealth the government needs to get this right.

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Wealthy ANC supporter Kenny Kunene (left) eating sushi from the body of a bikini-clad woman

It's also a story that gets close to the heart of South Africa's - a point heavily underlined by these - and to the ideological battles within the ruling alliance. Oh yes, and it's nearly election time here, which explains a lot.

Almost inevitably, the incident in question involves Julius Malema - the leader of the ruling party's youth league - a hard-partying populist who often seems to waver unapologetically between the doctrines of Che Guevara and Donald Trump.

Last weekend Mr Malema was in Cape Town, at the opening of a new nightclub. He has hotly denied suggesting that the club "belonged to the ANC" - as reported in one newspaper.

But no-one is disputing the fact that raw fish was served from the body of at least one bikini-clad woman who had been hired for that purpose.

A wealthy ANC supporter named Kenny Kunene was shown on the front pages of various local newspapers, grazing on her stomach and attempting to pour champagne into her mouth.

Last year, Mr Kunene enjoyed a similar meal at his own birthday party and was furiously unapologetic when But this time, no doubt with an eye on the upcoming local elections, the ANC has put its foot down more firmly.

And so, a chastened Mr Kunene has issued his own statement: "I will not be throwing or attending any further such sushi parties as I have nothing but respect for the leadership of the ANC and the guiding principles of the movement. Were it not for the work and struggle of these ANC leaders, my leaders, the money that black business people have made since 1994 would not have been possible, and this also applies to me."

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