Soweto was my generation’s Baghdad. Every night, we saw pictures of it on the news, scenes of burly policemen cruising the streets in Chevrolets, shooting children for fun. Of mobs setting fire to buses and blocking the roads with burning tyres.

Now, though, just 20 years later, it’s a bit like Surrey. There are well-kept lawns and lots of four-wheel-drive cars. There’s a shopping centre and a forest of cranes building a stadium for the upcoming World Cup. Sure, there’s Winnie Mandela’s mansion, which sits like a bulletproofed blister in the middle of it all, and the “Education is good for you” graffiti doesn’t quite ring true.

But I spent a day there last week and at no point did anyone put a tyre round my neck and set fire to it. I even had a jolly nice lunch under a jolly nice bougainvillea bush.

So what was it that brought about this transformation? Was it the legion of pop stars who sang about the iniquities of apartheid? Or was it the sanctions? Or could it be that pressure groups back then concentrated on real problems rather than the environment?

You do wonder, don’t you? If the firebrands and the beardies would stop worrying about polar bears, could a similar transformation be achieved in Darfur and Zimbabwe and the mayoral office of London?

I’m afraid not. The main reason the war against apartheid was won is that Nelson Mandela looks good on a T-shirt.

I mean it. Look at all the successful freedom fighters and you’ll note they all had one thing in common: a chiselled, romantic figurehead. Che Guevara, for instance, worked well as a screen print, and as a result the rebels still hold power in Cuba. And because Yasser Arafat looked like he’d just stepped out of that bar in Star Wars, Palestine is still a prison rather than a country.

Why do you suppose Northern Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom? Simple. The IRA was never going to win, because with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams they were represented on the world stage by a ginger and a minger.

The Basques have a similar problem. I met Eta’s political leader a couple of years ago and he was about as charismatic as a root vegetable.

Potty Pol had a great name but because his face didn’t work on a badge his efforts in Cambodia were always going to come to naught. And it’s the same story with Shining Path, the Tamil Tigers and Nazi Germany, for that matter. If Hitler had looked like Jim Morrison who knows what shape the world might be in today?

This of course brings me neatly to the question of Muslim extremists. They are waging a preposterous campaign, trying to make all women in the world wear their headscarves back to front. And there’s no doubt that if their international leader was Abu Hamza they wouldn’t get anywhere.

One eye is good. Admiral Nelson pulled that off well and so does Gordon Brown. It makes you look sinister and interesting. Then there’s the hook for a hand. That’s inspirational. The stuff of Bond baddie legend. But I’m sorry, the rest is hopeless; especially that patchy and spartan face fungus, as threadbare as an aristocrat’s carpet.

Unfortunately, however, Hamza is not the global figurehead. That role belongs to Osama Bin Laden, and let’s cut to the chase on this, shall we? The man’s a looker. Teaming those gentle and kind eyes with an ever-present AK-47 keeps us guessing. He even manages to look good in a dress and that beard. Wow. It could so easily have come across as pantomime stupid, and yet you just want to run your hands through it. You imagine it’s as soft as silk.

In short the man is cool. Cold, actually, because he’s almost certainly dead, buried under tons of daisy-cut Afghan rock. And yet, despite this small drawback, the Americans will never be able to beat him unless they wake up, smell the coffee and elect Johnny Depp.

Mrs Clinton really won’t do. Quite apart from the fact that she seems to be a strange mix of naked ambition and lunacy, she cannot hope for victory against the forces of evil and savagery with a name like Hillary.

Think of all the songs that have been written about girls. Gloria, Emily, Clair, Peggy Sue, Laura, Mary, Nikita. It’s hard to think of any name that isn’t in a song. Except one. And don’t you think that says something? That in all of human history, no one has ever been moved enough by someone called Hillary to write a song about them.

Names matter as much as looks. Boadicea was not called Joan, and as a result was able to whip up a sufficient frenzy among her followers that she defeated the Roman army and laid waste to Colchester. Joan of Arc, on the other hand, was called Joan and got burnt at the stake. It’s not for nothing that God chose to call his only son Jesus rather than Roy or Nigel.

I’m being sensible here. Che Guevara realised that he needed the whole package to succeed – not just a beret and a wistful look – so he dropped the name his parents had given him: Ernesto. And Temujin only really got going after he rebranded himself as Genghis Khan.

There is some good news from all of this though. One day Robert Mugabe will be sunk by his silly moustache, Kim Jong-il will be defeated by his own wardrobe and Jonathon Porritt will fail because even if he were called Clint Thrust he sports the one thing that is guaranteed to end anyone’s quest for global domination: a combover.

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