Despite the extremely public nature of last week’s shocking crime against SA, eyewitness accounts still seem confusingly contradictory.

I have read, for example, that Cyril Ramaphosa’s government was caught hopelessly flat-footed by last week’s violence, and that he pulled off a brilliant strategic manoeuvre by sacrificing malls and warehouses to save his presidency, deliberately pulling police and troops back to avert a massacre that would have seen him recalled and hand victory to the Radical Economic Transformation bittereinders...