What the Competition Appeal Court's finding demonstrates is that Minister Ntshavheni's notion that there is a grand conspiracy of banks colluding to depress the value of the rand and generally destroy the economy is the ridiculous ideological bumf that we are beginning to expect from senior government ministers.

In November last year, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni was in a state of high excitement. One of the 28 South African and international banks that have been fighting the Competition Commission for a decade in what is known as the Forex Cartel case had admitted culpability.

The bank, Standard Chartered (no relation to SA's Standard Bank), admitted liability for price fixing and dividing markets in the long-ongoing case, which involved currency traders using chat rooms to try to manipulate trades. Standard Chartered agreed to pay a fine of R43-million.

In response, Ntshavheni said in a report-back on a Cabinet meeting that this proved the government's long-term belief that the rand was being "manipulated by the private sector who has no interest in the development of this country [and] who continue to engineer and do machination [sic] to make sure that the government collapses".

There would and should be consequences, she said. At this point, it seemed the Competition Commission's case was at last getting somewhere. Well, how different things look now. The Competition Appeal Court confirmed this week what some of the SA banks have been saying for a decade: they were completely innocent, and they had no...