There are not many places left where President Jacob Zuma can go and not be pilloried. His visit to a Cosatu Workers' Day rally in Bloemfontein yesterday always carried the risk of a hostile reception, but Zuma probably figured he needed to show his face at a major workers' event on a public holiday of deep significance to the ANC-led alliance.
He is probably now wishing he'd opted for somewhere safer, deep in Nkandla-land, perhaps.
Not only was he booed out of the trade union rally venue, skedaddling in ignominy in a heavily secured motorcade, his mere presence there evoked such anger that Cosatu felt it necessary to summarily shut down the whole event.
In recent weeks the president has had his front lawn at the Union Buildings littered with righteously indignant people; he was forced to mobilise the defence force to keep at bay mobs shouting for his downfall outside parliament; his birthday party in Kliptown had to be carefully orchestrated with die-hard supporters being bused in from the sticks; his visit to the Saxonwold shebeen last week had pesky news hounds sniffing around - who had to be roughly manhandled by his heavies.and so on.
Until now the president's stock response to all this outrage over his allegedly corrupt behaviour has been to blame white people hankering for apartheid, or white monopoly capital, or the infamous "clever blacks".
But yesterday's humiliation in Bloemfontein cannot be pinned on any of those conspiratorial forces. This was the backbone of his party's support, the black working class, telling him to shove off out of their sight.
Even this notoriously thick-skinned emperor must at last sense he has no clothes.
His small coterie of praise-singers convinced him that he was clad in finery, but there is nothing like a hard-arsed, unionised mineworker to tell it to you straight.
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