I’m always amazed at how easily our government falls into lying and bamboozlement as a routine way of communicating. Everything is always absolutely fine. I was stunned at the ANC’s January 8 statement last week, faithfully read out to the crowd gathered for him in Limpopo by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

This annual statement is, formally, the work of the ANC’s national executive committee and, typically, this one was a mess. Fortunately for Ramaphosa it was so unmemorable, and so overwhelmed by Lindiwe Sisulu’s attack on the judiciary and on the ANC itself, that it may soon be forgotten, if it is not already...