Lord Mayor at home in SA

I find US politicians and elected officials awfully dull.

President Barack Obama seldom smiles when he speaks, Ben Bernanke looks like he's wearing a poker-faced carnival mask when he testifies to Congress, while Tea Party hopeful, Michele Bachmann, is as heavy-hearted as any Nashville songstress.

It's probably the reflection of a culture where the media and bloggers agonise over every word or gesture emitted by its public figures and where even an innocuous wisecrack is destined to offend some or other fringe cause or minority group.

Compare that with the British, where understatement, self-deprecation and quick-witted riposte are as much part of their way of life as a cup of tea, Wimbledon and the quintessential upper-class snob.

Last week I attended a breakfast honouring the Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Michael Bear's, visit to Johannesburg.

The Lord Mayor's office was originally instituted in 1189 by King John to represent and promote the business interests of the city of London.

Alderman Bear, a successful engineer and director of a number of renowned international construction companies, has close links with South Africa.

Although he was born in Kenya and spent most of his youth in Cyprus, his father was from Durban, his mother from Muizenberg, his wife from Klerksdorp and his degree from Wits. In his opening remarks at the breakfast, he confessed that on the day of his induction, last November, he asked his wife if she ever believed that in her wildest dreams she would be married to the Lord Mayor of London. "Dear," she replied, rather dryly, "you never feature in my wildest dreams".

With a glint in his eye, though, he acknowledged he is the city's first "green" Lord Mayor - he recycles his speeches. It's understandable; during his tenure he is obliged to spend at least 100 days abroad, visit more than 20 countries and deliver a minimum of 800 talks.

London is one of the world's leading cities whose diverse range of people contributes to its importance as a commercial, financial, fashion, arts, entertainment and education centre.

During its 2000-year history the city has been repeatedly attacked by Vikings, bombed by the Luftwaffe, thumped by financial crisis, smitten by the Black Death, burnt down by the Great Fire and struck by numerous epidemics and other calamities. Yet, it remains the one place in the world where everybody wants to live.

What has enthralled me as a frequent visitor to London is how deregulation of the country's financial markets in the mid-1980s ignited a dramatic change in the city's appearance, transforming it from a sprawl of stone-faced office buildings to a more sociable setting of iconic urban structures. Apparently it was the lifting of protective post-war reconstruction laws in the early 1990s that allowed developers to match the needs of tenants - by erecting taller buildings and using existing space more effectively - in the process modernising the financial district from a monoculture to a congenial and lively neighbourhood that now includes restaurants, hotels, pubs and entertainment areas.

In the past 25 years, more than half the city's office stock has been replaced, driven by the requirements of a thriving financial sector.

But that's not the only upheaval that Big Bang brought as foreign firms flooded in, wanting a share of the action in the famed Square Mile. Gone forever were the bowler hats, furled umbrellas and legendary liquid lunches, replaced - in the name of progress - by Starbucks coffee, Polo shirts and banks of Bloomberg screens.

The Lord Mayor revealed that the ultimate aim of the governing corporation was to develop the city into a knowledge economy by continuing to attract the finest skilled professionals and thereafter encouraging networking of the various enterprises through easy communication and effortless accessibility. In simple language, the goal was to ensure that if you worked in the City of London, the world's best brains were conveniently located a block away.

Alderman Bear's trip was part of a goodwill visit to support South Africa's long-standing relations with the City of London. He recalled that as a gesture of good faith to his family's roots he invited a group of Zulu dancers to join the pageantry that preceded his historic journey to his investiture.

He grew concerned when a few days before the event, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi called him. Worried that the dancers were experiencing problems with their visas, the chief assured him everything was in order. The problem was more mundane. There was no word in Zulu for "Lord Mayor" and would he mind, the chief inquired, if the dancers could refer to him as "king".

"Hmmmm," he pondered thoughtfully, "I could live with that."