Confidence and its evil twin, shamelessness, tend to march in lock-step in public life.
It's why President Jacob Zuma, cabinet ministers Faith Muthambi, Bathabile Dlamini and Mosebenzi Zwane, and a host of others including Schabir Shaik, Grace Mugabe and Hlaudi Motsoeneng are incapable of displaying even a fragment of embarrassment when caught out.
The reaction of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane to Tuesday's damning judgment in the High Court in Pretoria - Judge John Murphy pulled no punches in setting aside her directive that the constitution should be amended to alter the Reserve Bank's mandate - will therefore be revealing.
Murphy let fly with an impressive barrage of adjectives in dealing with Mkhwebane's remedial action in her June report on the lifeboat to Bankorp/Absa in the 1990s. They included illegal, irrational, unconstitutional, disingenuous, peremptory and dismissive.