"A runner can always recognize another runner," Eugene tells me.
Ryan Brown for insiderIn those days, they didn't run for South Africa, but for QwaQwa – one of ten "homelands" established for Black South Africans.
Tiny, non-contiguous territories – supposedly, the original territory of different Black South African ethnic groups – dotted across the country.
It didn't turn out like that, but it didn't turn out like that for most Black South Africans either.
As I sat speaking to Sergio, South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was fighting for his political life after revelations that wads of cash, potentially ill-gotten, had been stolen from inside his sofa.