President Cyril Ramaphosa last week said a sad and tragic thing. According to our friend David Ansara, Ramaphosa, who was speaking on unemployment, told a conference, “We know what the problems are; we are not fumbling in the dark… But [economic] growth on its own will not bring millions from the margin into the fold. It will take time.” That is completely wrong. Growth, and only growth, will bring them in from the margins. Mr Ramaphosa’s predecessors Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki secured quite a lot of growth and, as a consequence, doubled the number of people in employment. Mr Ramaphosa has had just a quarter of that growth and has added barely any jobs.

Because they had four times the growth that Ramaphosa presided over, and the jobs that grew from that, Mandela and Mbeki presided over rising levels of African National Congress (ANC) support. Ramaphosa crashed the plane to 40% because he has had so little growth. And still he goes on about growth not being the answer. Dear ANC… there’s your problem.

Someone who could help is Chris Wright. Who’s that? He is Trump’s energy secretary, and a few days ago he said great and beautiful things. According to Wright, “I know many governments around the world have had a paternalistic, I call it neocolonial, [an] attitude that we're going to tell you how you should power Africa.” Amen. He went on to say, “Nothing that Africa does on its energy systems in all of our lifetimes will have any meaningful impact on global greenhouse gas emissions… It will not matter. But it will matter massively to the lives of Africans.” That is so spot-on. It is an appalling abuse of the continent that Europeans come here to say what energy sources Africans are permitted to use.

But the South African state won’t do it. A wandering albatross says that climate policy and legislation in South Africa have enabled a class of corrupt intermediary businesses that trade in green energy, to the detriment of the whole society. Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, if recollection is correct, once corrected a young climate fundamentalist by asking whether the person really believed there was no corruption behind South Africa’s net-zero, green-energy grift?

Specifically on fuel refineries, a related albatross says that South Africa’s clean fuel legislation was drafted to make the country's refineries unviable in order to enable a class of fuel-importing middlemen. The risk in that is vast to the country – as the Iran war may yet demonstrate. The albatross suggests that, if the legislation was pared back, there would be numerous takers for the refineries and South Africa could ensure its fuel sovereignty.

That’s been the big word of the past week. Sovereignty. ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula, second in line to the ANC throne if polls were to determine the result, has been going about saying that sovereignty is under threat because of the Americans. It’s not. Sovereignty is your ability as the state to do what you must on your terms, and fuel security and energy security are basic foundations of that (so is growing your economy). But corrupt green policies have scuppered the fuel side of things and, by hating on the Americans, Mr Mbalula’s party is alienating its most powerful ally on the energy side. The energy side, in turn, needs to be sorted to get back to growth, but if you don’t believe growth is the answer… what a horrible cycle you start to spin into. Maybe some Marx can help: “Tragedy… then farce”.

On tragic things, what has happened to the once great and storied South African Institute of International Affairs? A wandering albatross sent a report on its website that is mad. Quote: “SA’s land debate has been trapped between two inadequate options: individual freehold (land as commodity) and insecure communal tenure (land as identity without protection) […] The Living Land Title creates a third way. It is issued to a democratically constituted community entity, such as a trust, cooperative or certified Traditional Council, and guarantees perpetual, secure tenure. Embedded in the title is a community consent clause, requiring a supermajority for any lease or sale, protecting against elite capture… A mandatory intergenerational commons, including a school, cooperative garden, grazing land, or renewable energy microgrid, ensures shared benefit and intergenerational equity. This title makes land generative commons, not an elite possession.” This is Soviet collectivisation and it will kill South Africa. An albatross says the Institute has become entirely an appendage of Europe’s foreign policy and development lobby, and now reflects, as Chris Wright put it, “a paternalistic, I call it neocolonial, attitude [to] Africa”.

But there was one very great thing too this week. The greatest newspaper reported that, at a very deep level, South Africans trust each other and see the good in each other. That came from polls conducted over the past couple of years that reveal time and again that the great majority of the country’s people are united around good and decent values and want to work with each other, and not against each other, to make the country work. That is so great, as it is the most important thing that must be true for South Africa to be a success. And it is true. The data are emphatic. Maybe it’s the greatest truth of all. If South Africa could only find a way to use that better.