There was something chillingly familiar about the tone and content of Jacob Zuma’s 60-minute soliloquy on SABC that historic Wednesday afternoon. The confusion, the suppressed anger, the uncertainty about what had brought him to this point when everything looked to be going so well ... How could it be that suddenly, out-of-the-blue as it were, the ANC had decided to recall him? No-one had warned him that things weren’t hunky-dory. It took me about 10 minutes to realise I’d seen it before. Two weeks earlier I’d sat in parliament and listened to the Steinhoff team and Christo Wiese tell the members of three portfolio committees how shocked they were that December morning when they received Markus Jooste’s SMS with its foreboding message. It seems not one of the 80-member ANC national executive committee had told Zuma why the party might want him to go. Neither did any of his "top six" colleagues. So how could he have known? Among the rather long list of parties who didn’t warn the top...

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