How would C++ help with data munging? No matter what tool you choose, you still have to go through the pain of getting your data into the shape it needs to be in to do the analysis, charting, etc.

Also, Python has plenty of abstraction capabilities, just like C++. There's no reason all your code should be throwaway. Make use of classes, magic methods, list comprehensions, hashes, the Pandas library (lots of powerful abstractions for managing data in there).