Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is on a roll. Like a prophet tasked with an urgent revelation, she seems to be everywhere, speaking and speaking and speaking, softly but with the supreme confidence that comes from being untouched by worldly concerns, preaching her vision of ecstatic, all-embracing absurdity.

On the weekend, for example, she gave us the Parable of the Gangster Who Was Actually Sort Of A Nation Builder. The economic damage being done by the state’s ban on tobacco, Dlamini-Zuma revealed through mystical, Byzantine court papers, was partially being alleviated by the economic contribution of the illegal cigarette trade...