It was strange and familiar watching former president Jacob Zuma address a crowd of 2000 people outside the Durban court where he made his first appearance on fraud charges on Friday.
Strange because, I guess, the country has waited a long time for that moment. Familiar because I am learning to cook. It was like watching a reduction. You gradually, over a low heat, reduce the volume of your wine or juices or whatever until the mix minimises to its basics. And there they were on stage with Zuma.
Reduced, his support on stage amounted to Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Andile Mngxitama, Carl Niehaus, some chap who pretends he's leading a huge lobby against solar power and a few priests praying for miracles. Even Zuma would know it didn't amount to much.
The fightback promised through reports about Zuma loyalists massing in support of him in a number of newspapers which should know better simply isn't there. There was a sprinkling of ANC T-shirts but hardly enough to constitute "defiance" of an ANC instruction to members not to wear party gear at the court.
Behind the scenes, what's really happening is much more fascinating. Zuma isn't going to push away the supporters he does have but he knows they can't really help him. He knows that whatever evidence is led against him when his case begins in earnest later this year, or whatever the judgment, he has more powerful forces watching him.I was going to write that as "watching over him" but that would be to overstate things. Nonetheless, it seems clear that President Cyril Ramaphosa keeps in close touch with Zuma and consults him and tells him what he's doing. This has nothing to do with Zuma's coming trial, which Ramaphosa would not and could not prevent taking place.
But it has everything to do with Ramaphosa's position in the ANC and the supposed divide between the Zuma faction and Ramaphosa's. Cyril has evidently decided to deal with it by simply ignoring the people supposedly representing Zuma in the party machine and is conducting a relationship of his own with Zuma.
It is both clever and dangerous. Zuma almost always betrays a trust but the more trouble he is in the more he will need to be able to speak often and frankly with the sitting president. There is no point in, say, staying close to ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, until very recently a loud and proud Zuma loyalist. Magashule can no longer help Zuma. He is in too much trouble himself.
Whether it is spending R20-million on a farewell rally for himself as Free State premier, failing to preserve the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's house in Brandfort or conspiring in the Gupta-led fraud around the Estina dairy, Magashule has become a political menace to his own party. He will soon need priests as well. The law may come for him and the president would, with almost no regret, be obliged to let it take its course.
Equally vulnerable now that he has exhausted every legal avenue available to him is Home Affairs Minster Malusi Gigaba, whom court after court has accused of lying (and breaching his constitutional responsibilities) in his fight to stop the Oppenheimer family opening a VIP terminal at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.Ramaphosa last week pronounced himself "very concerned" about it all. Which probably means Gigaba should consider packing his bags. Merely expressing concern is something Ramaphosa can do now but would not have been able to do two months ago. Gigaba came eighth in the NEC vote in December. He is a Zulu. But Ramaphosa would survive firing him now if he wanted to and if he did speak to Zuma about it, it would be about how to do it and not whether to do it.
Slowly, Ramaphosa is consolidating. If there is going to be a challenge to him in the divided party it is going to have to coalesce around someone other than Zuma or his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and there are not many obvious candidates out there, his deputy included.
It means the president has political space to begin putting into place the "New Deal" he spoke of during the ANC leadership campaign.
"The ANC and its new leadership will need to mobilise all South Africans behind a programme that has clear and ambitious priorities and timeframes," he told an audience in Soweto last November.
"This New Deal must bring together government, business, labour and civil society in a meaningful and effective social compact to construct a prosperous, just society founded on opportunities for all."
Ramaphosa should get on with that and stop looking over his shoulder...