It’s hard to tell whether we should believe police minister Bheki Cele when he says the government is discussing the possibility of scaling down the lockdown to level 3.

I’m not suggesting he’s lying. A lie is when you know the truth, but choose to say something else, and such distinctions no longer exist in the ANC. For the ruling party, in which all morality has become an issue of utility, there are only two kinds of verbal emissions: those which are good for the party and which should be repeated often, and those which are bad for the party and which should be blamed on ill-discipline or outsiders.

Still, it would have been much more helpful to national morale if the journalists who quoted Cele had given us a few more clues as to whether or not we should get our hopes up...