As the ANC in eThekwini celebrates the return to high office of a woman about to stand trial for fraud, corruption, money laundering and racketeering, a few die-hard idealists have tried to muster some of that righteous, mid-2010s, Zuma-Must-Fall outrage.

Ten years ago, before the Gupta leaks, before we understood that we have a private investment club instead of a government, I was one of them, like a shabby-genteel expat living in a small Sicilian town.

Every three months, when the new stretch of road outside the town collapses, he writes an angry letter to the council, demanding to know why the road keeps collapsing. He doesn’t understand that it keeps collapsing because the local mafia has the contract to rebuild it. He doesn’t understand that the purpose of the road is not to remain intact but to be rebuilt...