Anyone listening to the evasive piffle being spouted at the state capture commission will be amazed at the kind of nonsense civil servants can apparently get up to. Here I am wincing at ending my opening sentence with a proposition, and our government officials are happily spending billions on trains that don’t fit the tracks, coal that doesn’t burn, crappy ambulances with three wheels, and public infrastructure that exists only in their febrile imaginations.

My current favourite shenanigan (reported by Marianne Thamm and the Daily Maverick, I think, though these stories get lifted so quickly by other sites it’s sometimes difficult to identify origin) is the R1.6bn spent in six months in 2020 by the SA Police Service on personal protective equipment (PPE)...

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