How to understand such strife? The sources are complex. Everywhere in independent Africa a small successor elite grabbed all the key political and bureaucratic positions and used them as a source of personal enrichment. There was no parallel in the pre-colonial situation for the gross inequalities that this produced: Leopold Senghor, the President of Senegal, owning a French chateau, Krobo Edusei, one of Nkrumah’s ministers in Ghana, owning a solid gold bed, the Congolese dictator Mobutu becoming one of the world’s richest men. This was achieved, moreover, in bone-poor countries. But when the ANC elite came to power in South Africa they were taking over the richest country on the African continent. The result has been a feeding frenzy which no Senegalese, Ghanaian or Congolese could ever have dreamt of. In a nutshell, the South African black elite has been involved in a vast, continuous party for the last 24 years.

Take, as a very small example, Gengezi Mgidlana, the Secretary to Parliament (i.e. to the Speaker) who, it is now revealed, used his position to acquire a large cash bonus, a study bursary for which he was not qualified, expensive clothes for his wife and himself, and business-class travel for himself and his wife. These he used on a number of foreign trips, most of which seem to have been nothing more than luxury holidays and shopping expeditions, in which he, his wife and friends stayed in top hotels and, at home, enjoyed chauffeured travel in luxury cars, often with blue lights flashing and outriders to emphasise his elite status.

Mgidlana was just a minor functionary, nothing more, but in effect he stole many millions of Rand — such were the resources available that even a minor functionary could steal for years without detection. And every cent of it has gone on conspicuous consumption, thus proving what a Big Man Mgidlana is or was. This is a perfect microcosm of what has happened with the South African black elite. Among the many billions thus peculated perhaps the most shocking thing is how few assets have been acquired.

The corruption took off under Nelson Mandela, accelerated under Thabo Mbeki and reached its current apogee under Jacob Zuma. What was different about Zuma was that the President himself set out quite openly to enrich himself and his family, that in return for kickbacks he allowed the state to be captured by an Indian immigrant family, the Guptas, and that corruption became systemic. Every town, every city, every province, every nationalised industry and every government department became a patchwork of interlocking rackets and patronage networks, often criminally enforced. Those brave enough to blow the whistle on what was going on were, quite normally, assassinated. But the fruits of office were universally known so that not infrequently even figures as lowly as town councillors were murdered by rivals eager to get their hands on contracts and tenders. Even the teachers’ union regularly sold teaching jobs, and the whistleblowers there too were sometimes murdered, for a thriving hit-man racket has sprung up and “contracts” to terminate witnesses are relatively cheap.