Sometimes "ambitions can get over you and kill your career". That's what a university colleague of former home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba told me when I asked his thoughts about his promotion to finance minister in April last year. Words that have proved prescient, as the man who believed his path to both party and state presidency was already written finally resigned this week. It seems so long ago that Gigaba was promoted to his biggest job in his storied career as a politician. It was a poisoned chalice and for a "smart" politician, it was an appointment well worth the risk of not accepting. ANC romantics often speak of not being able to say no to deployment, but when it was clear that former president Jacob Zuma had in essence gone rogue by operating outside of party structures, he should have declined. But in his pursuit of his long-cherished dream of unbridled power, the ascension would prove too attractive. In an inner circle of people just as ambitious, such as the mayor...

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