One of the many problems with SA's political crisis is that it is generating a false narrative about the relationship between economics and politics. Clearly, SA's economy is in trouble; clearly, that cost the ANC at the polls.

The ANC's economic failings have less to do with "neoliberalism" and "austerity" than with functionalism and efficacy. But if you read some of the commentary, it's so muddled and weird that it's alarming.

This always reminds me of failed, left-wing calamities of the past. The progression goes something like this: left-wingers get into power by promising the Earth. They impose disastrous economic policies with absolutely inevitable results. At this point, the people who imposed those disastrous economic policies -- usually involving reducing productive capacity, over-borrowing, and focusing too much on consumption rather than production -- have a choice.

Either they can admit that their ideas were wrong, and change course. Or -- and this is the fun part -- they can claim that the economic policies that created the mess in the first place were not imposed with enough vigour! Go harder, they argue. This helps the advocates of those poor economic choices avoid anything unpleasant like admitting they were wrong since they were let down by weak leadership and so on. What follows is an attempt to double down on precisely those same disastrous policies. And the result is, inevitably, even bigger disasters.

This progression accompanies economic debacles both...