“The best laid schemes of Mice and Men / oft go awry, / And leave us nothing but grief and pain, / For promised joy!”

Robert Burns’s memorable verse would be appropriate for the AARTO system, the e-tolling debacle, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, the Universal Service and Access Fund, Broadband Infraco, Eskom, the exclusivity period granted to Telkom, and any number of other grand schemes government has turned its dead hand to.