What will be the total cost of Durban losing the Commonwealth Games for 2022? Rest assured it will be far greater than the R120-million already spent on the bid, which in the greater scheme of things is nothing more than chump change.
The real cost will be counted in South Africa's credibility as an actor on the international stage and the damage there could be incalculable.
In the afterglow of our transition to democracy, we were able to hit above our weight both in international politics and in other spheres.
But the equity which those heady days delivered has been squandered with little regard to the future.
Our government's illegal withdrawal - and its subsequent overturning - from the International Criminal Court, for example, underlines our growing and apparent disregard for the norms of global citizenship as a nation.
The Commonwealth Games may be a sporting event, but it is far more than that. It also serves to cement a network of countries with a shared colonial legacy and which are broadly aligned culturally and ideologically.
Post-democratic South Africa has long played an active role in that community but the events surrounding Durban's Commonwealth Games bid would seem to send a different message.
The lesson here might be to not allow a sports minister who would appear to lack any appreciation of diplomacy to insert himself into situations beyond his ken.
The timing could not be worse either, with a delegation in South Africa now looking at Rugby World Cup 2023 bids.
With no sense of irony, Mbalula now enthusiastically backs this bid. Good luck with that one. The rugby bid officials would have to be idiots to believe anything he says. And that's the cost of the Durban debacle.
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