Kimi Makwetu, SA’s auditor–general and the man tasked with monitoring the feeding frenzy we still insist on calling “local government”, deserves a medal. A medal, a stiff drink, a long massage and a very large pillow into which he can sob.

This week, when he released his latest municipal audit results, he spoke with his usual gravitas, calmly and quietly confirming, in debilitating detail, the fact that nobody in SA’s civil service can come near even the smallest amount of money without stealing it, giving it to morons and conmen as payment for parodies of goods and services, or simply making it disappear...