IT started on the evening after England played Slovenia. I was sitting next to a pool table in a bar when a black South African came over and asked me if I'd like to play.

I lost – the table was undoubtedly on a slant – but the game ended with him asking if I'd ever seen a genuine South African township.

I told him I had, in Soweto, but he claimed that was a poor, tourist-driven example of what a township was really like.

As a result, I agreed to meet him at the outskirts of Walmer township in Port Elizabeth at 10am the following morning. Both of us were as good as our word, and the four hours that followed represented an incredible education into life in modern-day South Africa. Here are some of the observations I made.

The mystery with South Africa is not how unstable it is, but that any kind of stability can be achieved at all.

Walmer is home to around 75,000 people. More than 70 per cent are unemployed, and the state provides benefits only to over-65s (the equivalent of £25-a-week) and mothers of children under nine (around £5-a-week per child). The rest of the population receives nothing.

One in every three people in Walmer is infected with HIV or AIDS, and while official records do not exist, the average life expectancy is estimated to be around 40.

About a quarter of the township is reasonably similar to the worst English housing estate it is possible to imagine. The houses are made of brick, there is electric and water, and there are a handful of shops and amenities.

The other three quarters is what we would describe as third world. The only water comes from a tap that services 20-or-so streets. The electric is procured illegally, and is therefore both unreliable and dangerous. There are no roads to speak of, and every house owns a couple of chickens and a goat.

Compare that to the white communities where I have been staying throughout South Africa, with their servants, security fences and four-wheel drive jeeps.

I would never want to wish bad things on any country, but how can a majority of the population live in such abject poverty compared to the minority who have not seen their lives change since the end of Apartheid?

People view neighbouring Zimbabwe as a basket case, and it is. But when the majority are so downtrodden, is it any wonder people will do anything for change?

Football is the world's one global language.

The mothers in Walmer, who are queuing for water to wash their clothes, do not look anything like people in England. The children, kicking a cheap, inflatable football around the streets, could be anywhere in the world.

Most roads in the township contained shoes marking out goalposts, with children, who are on school holiday, running here, there and everywhere in between. The green in the middle of Walmer was supposed to be a sacred area belonging to the church, but it had been taken over by teenagers playing football.

The scene was exactly as I remember from Wolsingham School field as a child. Give a young boy anywhere in the world a football, and he will be happy for hours on end.

Similarly, spark up a conversation in a bar anywhere in the world and drop in the words “Manchester United”, “Liverpool” or “Chelsea” and you will struggle to extricate yourself for an hour.

Tobani had never been anywhere near Liverpool in his life, yet he delivered a passionate argument in favour of Roy Hodgson being the club's next manager. Could anything other than football inspire such universal debate?

The other thing that brings people together is drinking.

I shouldn't be admitting this in print, but I have to confess I had a beer or two in the local 'shebeen', or bar. At first, it seemed slightly unnatural. Two large bottles of Castle in, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

I was the only white face in the bar, but once a couple of beers had been sunk, people of all ages were keen to come over to me and talk about everything, from the serious (is South African politics endemically corrupt) to the mundane (who's the better looking – Shakira or Beyonce).

Alcohol produces many problems, but it is the world's great leveller. And it always tastes better when it's 50p-a-pint.

People, in my general experience, are the same the world around.

This is clearly subjective, and I don't doubt that there are tourists who have been robbed or threatened in South Africa. But, as I explained in yesterday's column, I also don't doubt that the same is true in the rest of the world.

In general, I have found that if you treat someone with a bit of friendship and respect, they will treat you exactly the same.

Tobani didn't have to meet me yesterday, and he certainly didn't have to show me and a friend around his hometown with such openness and generosity. He did so, he claims, because that is what we had shown to him the night before.

The world is full of potential dangers, but it is also full of people who want to be kind and helpful. It would be a shame to miss the latter because you are fearful that the former might appear.