Throughout the vast majority of my time travelling alone through Southern Africa, English was all I needed to communicate. In fact, the sole exception to this was a strange evening in a Johannesburg bar being taught some Xhosa chat-up lines – perhaps fortunately, they were never put to use! While this is clearly convenient, it is difficult to not be reminded of the colonial history of this beautiful place that caused the ubiquity of English and a suppression of indigenous languages.