As news broke that the offices of the Zondo commission had been burgled and a computer stolen, it was natural to speculate about who had committed the crime and whether they know sensitive documents are usually saved onto servers rather than engraved onto small, immovable tablets by tiny stonemasons who live inside computers.

Indeed, it seemed such a Hail Mary of a crime that some might have suspected the tangential involvement of the patron saints of losing causes, the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction of the ANC...