You’d have thought the ANC would have learnt from state capture, a traumatic era in which the party breathed hardly a peep about the industrial-scale larceny happening over at 3 Saxonwold Drive. Yet when finance minister Tito Mboweni displayed a smidgeon of independence, one of his finer characteristics as finance minister, he came in for a lacerating attack for being "ill-disciplined" from within his own political party. What riled his critics, this time, was Mboweni’s admission that "I didn’t like the continuous ban on alcohol and tobacco but I lost the debate, and therefore I have to toe the line."

He later added that having to obey the collective decision "sometimes feels like swallowing a rock"...

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