Former President Jacob Zuma continues to test our constitutional ethics.
Now the question is, will he finally mang for it?
He is boldly defying the country’s judicial institutions, of which he was once the chief custodian.
Last week, he was meant to make submissions to the Constitutional Court, explaining why he should not be imprisoned.
The Zondo Commission of Inquiry has asked the highest court in the land to throw Zuma in prison for two years, for refusing to give further testimony before it, as ordered by the Constitutional Court.
His defiance of the rule of law is less a constitutional crisis than it is an ANC crisis.
Imprisoning him will undoubtedly destabilise whatever political balance we can still claim to have.
But letting him off the hook will send a dangerous message to the country’s electorate at large, and political leadership in particular.
Zuma is in a corner and this is him spinning the roulette wheel of chance, in the hope of scoring a few chips, with which to bargain with his ruling party.
He knows that the sight of him in shackles has the potential to tear the ANC apart at the seams.
He also knows that it is an unsettling thought ahead of the party’s 2022 elective conference, where Cyril Ramaphosa’s future as president will be decided.
It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one that makes sense.
But it must irk him that the men he appointed into their current positions – Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng and commission chairman Raymond Zondo – are now presiding over his fate.