As a Basotho-born star graduate in Cape Town, Lesebo Bafokeng did not expect a life of turmoil. Due to inherited power and wealth as a tribal heiress, she instead survives torrid experiences – sexual assault and manipulation – that she eventually turns to her advantage. As an ideological feminist, she forces a way through Cape Town’s web of corruption and racial cultures to become its first black female mayor.

She is not completely alone. With Maddox Illingworth, a British-born private investigator, and Kobus Labuschagne, an ambitious Afrikaner mayor, she is encouraged to triumph over an entrenched Indian warlord and political cabal headed by the Deputy President. The prize is Siyeza – a vast project to convert the Cape Flats from squalor and poverty to decent housing and modest prosperity for unemployed coloured and black inhabitants.

Saving Siyeza catches all today’s bywords of South Africa – black and white love, have and have not, “big men, little people” in Africa, racial discord, breath-taking corruption and manipulation, cronyism and colonialism. Yet rising above come truth, honesty and trust, personified by a female visionary.