I am easily amused, but I have not had as much fun reading a serious document in years as I have had poring over the Treasury economic discussion document that was dropped into the public space, quite without warning, on Tuesday by finance minister Tito Mboweni.

As the document hit the streets, Mboweni’s boss, President Cyril Ramaphosa, was in Tokyo, extolling the virtues of Africa’s future at an investment conference...