John Steenhuisen has come in for a tremendous amount of criticism and mockery for going on a “fact-finding” trip to Ukraine, but I suspect he’s sleeping relatively easily in his bunker in Kyiv.

By now you will have heard many of the loudest objections, ranging from accusations of selective, Eurocentric concern — he hasn’t gone to find facts in any African or Middle Eastern wars — to dereliction of duty, travelling to the other side of the world while the Cape Flats remain racked by violence.

Some have also expressed bemusement over his decision to appoint himself as a sort of roving correspondent specialising in reporting facts covered a month earlier by actual journalists. Others have wondered about his peculiar foregrounding of the price of chips at school tuck-shops as a major consequence of the Russian invasion...