Good morning, East London

In 2003, Thabo Mbeki described South Africa as a country with two parallel economies: one developed, rich and globalised, the other broken, poor and rural.

He chose then to focus on the economic drivers that had allowed this inequality to persist for a decade after the collapse of apartheid, which had constructed this dualism in the absurd belief that a fair-skinned minority could live forever in a cocoon of wealth and comfort based upon the labour of a darker-skinned majority confined to massive work camps offering only the barest essentials of life.

"The first economy is modern, produces the bulk of our country's wealth, and is integrated within the global economy. The second economy is characterised by underdevelopment, contributes little to the GDP, contains a big percentage of our population, incorporates the poorest of our rural and urban poor, is structurally disconnected from both the first and the global economy, and is incapable of self-generated growth and development," he said in an address to the National Council of Provinces.

The reality of Mbeki's dual economies was, for most people, a dual society in which the living of life was so different that each part might have been on a different planet. It was and remains more about different worlds than different economies.

I have lived these past seven years firmly entrenched in Mbeki's first world on one or other slope of the Table Mountain chain stretching from Table Bay to Cape Point.

Even without the visits to the second world required by my job, the other reality of Cape Town would have been harder to hide from here than it is in Johannesburg. The view through the trees of Constantia across the Cape Flats towards Khayelitsha and the airport is set among the city's townships. But the lifestyle of even the middle classes is so exclusive that one might easily ignore the distant evidence of that other world.

I have enjoyed living in Cape Town, but through the ups and downs of a fabulously entertaining career in newspapers and international news agencies I have nursed an improbable wish to edit a newspaper - specifically the Daily Dispatch in East London.

That newspaper, now almost 140 years old, embodies the best traditions of newspapering in a community that reflects the greatest challenges of our country and time. And it is in a city which, for reasons I cannot explain, I have always loved.

The Daily Dispatch has resisted the race to the bottom that the commercial imperative has tricked some newspapers into joining. It looks, feels and reads like a newspaper and speaks with authority in the region.

I had long given up hope of realising that ambition when the call came a week or two back, so it probably will be with an expression of delighted surprise locked on my face that I head off next week to take on exactly that job.

I will, of course, continue to live within the cocoon of the first economy. I shall rent a secure home in a comfortable suburb and probably get to know such fine restaurants as the city has. But I shall have moved from one of the best-run cities in the country to one of the worst-run, from the globalised first world to the marginalised second.

I will be moving from the world of those Mbeki called "the rulers" - ministers, MPs and officials who visit parliament - to the world of "the ruled", where theory succeeds or fails. It might be less pretty, but I am sure it will be more real.

Terence Nombembe, the auditor-general, was scathing about the Eastern Cape and East London when he released his municipal audits in June. Buffalo City, the East London municipality, had slipped from a qualified audit to a disclaimer, which meant its records were so bad that he could not form an opinion, he said.

"The unfavourable outcomes are mainly attributable to a volatile political climate within the councils and inadequate leadership practices," Nombembe said.

But why should the province and city, whose people have achieved and contributed so much in South Africa and who speak of their home with every bit as much affection as the people of Gauteng or Cape Town, battle so to get it right?

Some tell me this region, which produced Nelson Mandela, Govan and Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani and Steve Biko, was damaged in some especially cruel way by apartheid and has yet to recover. Others say the apartheid backlogs in infrastructure and administration were simply insurmountable. But there must be more to it than that.

If the city could harness such passion, talent and dedication as the Daily Dispatch has in its newsroom, it would knock Cape Town into a cocked hat - or give it a very good run for its money.

I know it's there in politics, government, business and civil society. I can't wait to join the conversation about celebrating the excellence and exposing the iniquity that coexist there as they do in every corner of this fascinating country.