The Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture has only just started, but it looks set to become a raging flood that's likely to leave a lot of political wreckage in its wake. We're already beginning to see the slow, but inexorable unravelling of Gwede Mantashe.
Not that scandals have ever dimmed political careers, in this government anyway. There's a lot of flotsam floating around the cabinet table.
Ace Magashule's election as ANC secretary-general was met with surprise, even disbelief. As premier he almost ran the Free State into the ground. Most of the province's municipalities are dysfunctional. He's been implicated in the Estina dairy farm scandal, in which money intended to help emerging black farmers went into the pockets of the Guptas and was spent on their lavish wedding at Sun City.
Incompetence and corruption didn't seem to be a bar to Magashule ascending to one of the most powerful jobs in the party. But the outcry that greeted his ascendancy seemed to suggest that the man he was succeeding, Mantashe, was somehow unsullied by scandal, or at least not as deep in the mess as Magashule. Towards the end of Jacob Zuma's reign, he had tried to distance himself, in public at least, from Zuma's corrupt cabal.
But Mantashe was part of the putsch that propelled Zuma to power in Polokwane. As chairman of the SACP and a former general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, he represented the two constituencies - Cosatu and the SACP - that detested what they termed Thabo Mbeki's Thatcherite economic policies. For his role in thrusting Zuma into power, Mantashe was rewarded with the secretary-general job.
Hardly a year after that boisterous Polokwane conference, Mantashe and Kgalema Motlanthe were sent, after an all-night meeting of the national executive committee, to wake up Mbeki in the morning to tell him the game was up. Later that day it was an elated Mantashe who announced at a media conference that Mbeki had been recalled.
He was to play a crucial role in helping to shepherd Zuma through the many rapids of his presidency. He stoutly defended him on the Nkandla debacle. The judiciary, he said, was counter-revolutionary for always finding against the government or the party.
ANC MPs who voted in favour of an opposition resolution to impeach Zuma were guilty of treachery. And the man who was at the forefront of recalling Mbeki was now arguing that removing Zuma before the expiry of his term would make Mbeki's recall look like "a Sunday-school picnic".
He was not necessarily defending Zuma, he said, but his priority was party unity. It's the same line taken by President Cyril Ramaphosa: ANC unity as the sine qua non. Zuma also famously declared that the ANC was more important than SA.
It was only during the turbulent leadership contest last year that Mantashe openly broke ranks with Zuma to support Ramaphosa. Again, he's been amply rewarded. Apart from being made party chair, he's also mineral resources minister.
All along Mantashe had given an impression that he was no friend of the Guptas, Zuma's benefactors. In fact he was the first to make a fuss when a Gupta plane carrying a wedding party landed at Waterkloof Air Force Base. His intervention led to the appointment of an inter-ministerial task team to investigate. But that was merely to pull the wool over the public's eyes. Senior party officials, including Mantashe, knew more than they were letting on. We were to learn later that even the wedding was funded from the public purse.
And when former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas and Themba Maseko and others made serious allegations of impropriety against the Guptas, Mantashe called on them to hand him the evidence so he could investigate. The probe was stillborn. His intention was to sweep everything under the carpet. We now know why. He, like Zuma, was not only in the Guptas' pocket; he was a willing hand in capturing the state.
This week senior executives from the country's four major banks told the commission how, after they suspended the Guptas' accounts, they were summoned to Luthuli House where they were grilled by Mantashe and his minions on their actions. The banks seemed to relish the opportunity to stick in the knife. "In my 32 years as a banker, this is the first call I have ever got from a political party," said former FirstRand CEO Johan Burger.
The goofiness of it, the utter stupidity and the arrogance, are straight out of a banana republic. Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala, the only black head of a major bank, was even insultingly accused of being a pawn of so-called white monopoly capital. Mantashe had apparently swallowed Bell Pottinger's propaganda hook, line and sinker. Luthuli House seemed to have co-ordinated its attack on the banks with Mosebenzi Zwane, a shameless Gupta stooge, who threatened to change the law to force the banks to do the government's bidding.
When the commission began its hearings, Mantashe seemed prepared to go toe-to-toe with any witness who dared even mention his name in passing. Vytjie Mentor had hardly uttered his name before Mantashe was out of the blocks, challenging her testimony.
This week, however, he seemed to have given up any thought of serial denials. He realised he stood the risk of drowning if he were to try to stop the avalanche.
Mantashe's entanglement presents Ramaphosa with a challenge. It constrains his scope to act or confront allegations of corruption by the likes of Magashule and others. His chair and trusted ally is knee-deep in it.
The plot thickens...