TOM EATON | Who would have thought the ANC could steer us into unmapped territory?

I thought it was impossible because this is not how reality works.

First, it seemed almost surreal that an ANC president might serve time before any apartheid leader did.

I know we seem to have taken a barely articulated decision to draw a line under that vile regime and tell each other we can’t compare crimes in a democratic society with those in a hate-based tyranny, but I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that FW de Klerk will never spend a day behind bars, while Jacob Zuma will probably end up serving about 100.

Then there was the ANC’s almost endless reiteration, through word and deed, that consequences and the rule of law are for other people.

The story of the ANC for the past 10 years is one of justice deferred, denied, dodged or simply ignored. This, after all, is the party of Qedani Mahlangu, the person ultimately responsible for the deaths of 143 mentally ill patients at Life Esidimeni in 2016, which, in 2018, tried to appoint her to Gauteng’s provincial executive committee and which is now trying to do it again.

I made jokes in this column about Zuma skipping the country, but I honestly thought he would. Certainly, it would have been the most elegant solution, sparing him from disgrace, while saving the eternally cautious Cyril Ramaphosa from having to do the unthinkable.

Here we are, in startlingly new territory, having to review everything we believe about Ramaphosa’s resolve to purge the Zupta cabal from the ANC and maybe, just maybe, start undoing the immense damage of the past decade.

And yet here we are, in startlingly new territory, having to review everything we believe about Ramaphosa’s resolve to purge the Zupta cabal from the ANC and maybe, just maybe, start undoing the immense damage of the past decade.

We all understood Ramaphosa was locked in a high-stakes, winner-takes-all struggle with that cabal; that if he didn’t crush the Zuma faction it would regrow and behead the South African state once and for all. We all knew Ramaphosa had to act, or at least be cautious in a slightly more forthright manner.

But I didn’t believe it could happen so quickly or so cleanly.

In the clear light of Thursday morning it looked like a textbook manoeuvre: Ramaphosa on the other side of the world, his hands squeaky clean (or as clean as any hands can be when they’re raised in adoration of and supplication to the Chinese Communist Party); our impressive justice minister looking unflappable, professional and supremely in command of the law; the pantomime dandy, Bheki Cele, more or less sidelined; and Edward Zuma surprisingly reneging on his vow to die before he allowed his father to be arrested, cutting a pathetic figure as he lurched about outside Nkandla waving a stick.

A few hours earlier Dali Mpofu had grimly invoked the spectre of a second Marikana, but the events of Wednesday showed Ramaphosa’s administration going in an entirely different — and entirely new — direction, being quietly efficient and disarmingly anodyne.

To be clear, that administration is still part of the ANC, an extraction machine offering sheltered employment and unearned wealth to thousands of Qedani Mahlangus, as it revels in being economically illiterate and unapologetic about placing the party above the country.

Which makes Wednesday’s events even more disorienting.

Suspending Ace Magashule was one thing, but to get that dumpster fire of an organisation to agree in principle to jailing Zuma, and then to have him actually sent to prison without endless legal filibustering or, as I feared, incompetence triggering violence, well: truly this is terra incognita.