It has been a long time coming, so long it was starting feel like a lifetime, and some of us thought it would never happen — but the crooks and criminals, the blessers and the kept, and above all, those who contributed, even in the smallest of ways, to the hollowing out of the state, are being rounded up by the police.

Besides the charges of corruption they face, they can be held responsible, also, for the erosion of trust in the state, threats to democracy, and for destabilising or undermining cornerstone institutions of governance...