Nick Dall has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT. As a journalist covering everything from cricket to chameleons, his favourite stories are always those about people -- dead or alive, virtuous or villainous. He is the co-author with Matthew Blackman of 'Rogues Gallery: An Irreverent History of Corruption in South Africa' (Penguin Random House).

Both PW Botha and Vladimir Putin banked on a fractured response to their Machiavellian schemes. Instead, they ended up uniting the opposition like never before.

For more than two decades, Vladimir Putin has gotten away with human rights abuses and unsolicited aggression across the former USSR and as far as Syria and the Central African Republic. Throughout this period, he's been able to rely on a disjointed international response to his vile behaviour. But with his recent venture in Ukraine, he might just be about to run out of free tickets.

Finland and Sweden's decisions to join Nato (assuming Turkey allows them to) are the latest in a string of shows of Western solidarity in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One of Putin's stated aims for invading Ukraine was to shore up his western border and diminish the impact of Nato. Instead,...