Where was I? Trying to re-enter South Africa's demented news cycle after a long break is like timing your entry into a revolving door that's just been given a violent wrench. About the only safe thing to declare now is that while the state capture project is still alive, we have at least passed Peak Gupta. The family have run out of road here and the people who helped them make and then move a fortune out of the country are in serious trouble.
That's already a trite observation. The big story is whether President Jacob Zuma is still in control of his succession as leader of the ANC. Perhaps it always has been.
Anyone who declares they know what is going to happen at the party's elective conference in mid-December is merely guessing.But she has run a dismal campaign and, try as she may, she cannot shake the fact that she was once married to Zuma. They have children together. It just has to be the core reason she is in the running, with Zuma's support, in the first place.
But the president must know she is vulnerable. His deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa, her main opponent, has also been an insipid campaigner, but such is the antipathy towards Zuma in his own party (let alone the country) that Ramaphosa is not only still in the race but may even be slightly ahead. I'm not so sure.
Zweli Mkhize, ANC treasurer-general and former premier of KwaZulu-Natal, has cleverly positioned himself as a reasonable alternative to both NDZ and Ramaphosa.
In the past week or so there's been an effort to paint Mkhize as Zuma's "real" candidate; that NDZ is merely a stalking horse. Don't be fooled. These rumours exist because Mkhize has become a serious proposition in his own right and he'd make an excellent leader of both party and state.He and Zuma have known each other for decades but they are very different characters.
That said, Zuma is a formidable tactician. My sources tell me (and this may be what Zwane thinks he knows) that Zuma is planning on four fronts, any one of which could change as soon as circumstances do.
First is to ensure that Ramaphosa never holds a position in the ANC again. Second, Mkhize will be "recalled" to some elevated position in KwaZulu-Natal. Third, he wants no contest on who makes up the ANC's top six. As a result, fourth, the big democratic moment in December would be openly contested when voting for a new national executive committee, rather than the top six position.
Whether Zuma can pull any of this trickery off remains to be seen. The other candidates and the current top six will have their own ideas - and the reinstatement of 783 counts of fraud against the president on Friday by the Supreme Court of Appeal judgment has weakened him...