The only alternative to State Capture is a competing model in which auditors, lawyers and media search not for whether the party got a kickback (because it will), but whether there was enough value for money created to justify the whole value chain.

Listen to this article 6 min Listen to this article 6 min President Cyril Ramaphosa is trapped between a party patronage network that could recall him - or try to recall him, given the Government of National Unity (GNU) - and a country collapsing under procurement graft. He's kept us in self-therapy through commissions and outrage cycles. Following the Zondo Commission, he now proposes a National Dialogue that could come to almost three-quarters of the Zondo commission's cost.

In many democracies, government contractors also fund election campaigns. When those contractors get away with murder, a conciliatory head of state like Ramaphosa invites government, business, labour and civil society to a "compact" to restore social trust. This call for conversation helped him stall through a global pandemic, the unrest of July 2021 and load shedding.

This turns public resilience into resignation, or more dangerously, into resentment that seeks scapegoats. We then see health officials blame foreign nationals for the consequences of their departments' procurement corruption.

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Whenever someone asks, "Why isn't there enough?", someone's there to answer, "The people you were raised to distrust finished everything" to draw attention from politicians' abuse of public resources.

Ramaphosa's peacebuilder persona...