The tentacles of this scandal are one of the reasons South Africa is on the Financial Action Task Force grey list. And the consequence of being on that list is that South Africa pays higher interest rates than it should. And that affects everyone: the government, government bodies, businesses, and you and me.

Aficionados of African corruption -- sad there is such a thing, but there is -- might have noticed a press release issued earlier this month by the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which announced it was sanctioning 28 individuals and businesses involved in a global gold smuggling and money laundering network based in Zimbabwe.

And therein lies a long, fascinating story which cannot be told in this little column. If you are interested, there is a great series on YouTube called The Gold Mafia, which tells the story of an Al Jazeera investigation into Zimbabwean gold smuggling and its links to, well, everywhere, but notably Dubai and South Africa. Obvs.

I want to make one salient, and perhaps slightly obvious, point and that is how enduring, pervasive and cancerous corruption is once it takes hold. The TLDR (too long; didn't read) story of the Gold Mafia is that since Zimbabwe is in an almost constant state of foreign currency shortages, people who can relieve that pressure -- even just a little -- are worth their weight in, well, gold. What Al Jazeera did was just extraordinarily brave: it infiltrated the smuggling network with undercover reporters...