Zuma kept awake by poverty but slept through Nkandla

Speaking to journalists at the ANC policy conference in 2012, President Jacob Zuma confessed to having sleepless nights after witnessing the privations of extreme poverty.

''I have paid visits to a number of areas where you can't believe that you are in South Africa . If I didn't know, or if I had forgotten [why I joined the struggle], then I could sleep peacefully. I can't,'' the president said.

But Zuma's conduct while government flunkies ran up astronomical bills to implement ''security upgrades'' at his lavish private homestead in Nkandla suggests that, in truth, he has lost precious little sleep.

Public protector Thuli Madonsela noted in her damning report into the spending of R246-million of taxpayers' money on the upgrades that Zuma had '' tacitly accepted the implementation of all measures at his residence and has unduly benefited from the enormous capital investment in the non-security installations''.

You can't put it more plainly than that.

Contractors and officials lower down in the food chain might end up as fall guys for this industrial-scale splurge, but Zuma would have had to have been asleep in his study not to have noticed that a cattle enclosure, amphitheatre, visitors' centre, chicken run and swimming pool - described by the officials as a ''fire pool'' - were being erected in his backyard. Or that the projected bill for the upgrade had ballooned from R65-million in 2009 to the current obscene price tag as costs were allowed to spiral out of control.

Zuma, who is yet to respond to Madonsela's findings, might ultimately be made to repay some of the costs of the unnecessary features, in line with her recommendations.

But, with the elections only six weeks away, our president is far more likely to go to court to challenge her report: he has previously said he would abide by Madonsela's findings, provided they are ''accurate''.

ANC leaders are rallying around Zuma now, but in the long run they might be forced by the weight of public opinion to consider whether their support for him is justified and can continue.