The magic words were at last spoken aloud, and the spell was instantly broken. The state does not create jobs, the private sector does. A sentence so innocent it might be a topic at a high school debating contest, or an essay for an Economics 1 course. Yet President Cyril Ramaphosa’s assertion in parliament that it is not the government’s role to create jobs is more than just a statement of an observable truth. In the ANC’s world it’s the equivalent of the astronomer Galileo Galilei declaring that the Earth does indeed orbit the sun. Not the other way around.

Not since FW de Klerk announced to a shocked and delighted world in February 1990 that “the season of violence is over” (or just starting as it turned out) has parliament been presented with such a cold-blooded slaying of an ideological dragon. In De Klerk’s case it was the unbanning of previously suppressed organisations; in Ramaphosa’s it’s the defenestration of an idea that defined the whole liberation effort. For decades, the takeover of the state was the holy grail of the struggle...