Ramaphosa’s release of Zuma shows he can’t even take care of himself (VIDEO)

Remember when President Cyril Ramaphosa told EFF leader Julius Malema he “fears f*ok*l”? It must be quite debilitating to finally be confronted with a repercussion that he can’t actually ignore.

Fortunately, it’s not like debilitation can have much effect on the weak anyway so the effects aren’t likely to be that severe but I’m sure he still holds a regret or two; specifically, about his little Jacob Zuma situation.

One of the first lessons we learnt as student politicians is that if you can save political capital by letting others make unpopular decisions then you make sure they make those unpopular decisions. Can you imagine how bad it would look if Ramaphosa or the ANC directly took Zuma on and contested his capacity for legislature? It would look great to us mere non-affiliated mortals but the grassroots would have a field day.

I’m not sure the court even made the right call and am eagerly awaiting the appeal to the Constitutional Court. Remember there are still four Zuma appointees on that bench and though I can’t think that any Justice will feel beholden to their appointing president, it’s another meal for a famished public. The judiciary is in for a tough battle in front of an increasingly cynical population in an exceedingly complicated web of legal principles. Good luck to them.

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But we can turn our attention to Ramaphosa again and realise that all this could have been avoided if he just didn’t release his predecessor. Why Cyril thought it fine to let his biggest competition out of jail is beyond me. For what benefit? There is absolutely no benefit to anyone other than Zuma  and his acolytes that he was freed early.

It’s not like he wasn’t sentenced to prison. A whole Constitutional Court sent him there. It’s not like he didn’t have his day in court. A whole number of court cases were at his disposal. It’s not like he’s got any dirt on Rama-… let me not make that claim. But a series of independent institutions put the dude away. The president must have taken a look at that and thought it was Christmas.

Watch Ramaphosa say he has no regrets about the decision:

I’d bet most of us would prefer Santa to wrap up our political enemies and toss them in jail without even our slightest intervention but we’re apparently not that worthy of such blessings. Though we know Santa isn’t real because if he were, the amount of coal delivered on 25 December annually would be sufficient to run 29 Kusiles.

And I’m not even going to go into how bad Ramaphosa has led the people, country or indeed his own party. I’m just going on about how bad he is at his own self-preservation; how bad the whole team is. I’d love a laissez faire form of governance but this warped form of doing as little as possible but ensuring that the little that is done is as stupid as possible deserves a whole new term; perhaps laissez fairecical because it does feel like an exaggerated slapstick situation.

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When you’re driving down the N1, before you reach your destination, stop. Don’t even bother pulling over. Make the traffic wait behind you. Walk ahead about 100 metres. Put a couple of rocks on the road. Behind that, dig the road up. For good measure and in true South African spirit, burn a couple of tyres on the tarmac. Then return to your vehicle and continue driving through your self-created obstacles. I mean, do you even get to use the road if you don’t make it a challenge for yourself at the expense of the piles of traffic behind you?

Do you even get to be president if you don’t make it difficult for yourself at the expense of some 60 million people?

Gosh. It’s just too surreal. I’ve never seen a legal system put through such rigorous paces just to allow the executor-in-chief the opportunity to score an own goal. An opportunity grabbed with tremendous exuberance.

I’d say that this is sad but let’s look at this silver lining. We’ve spent years feeling the effects of bad calls. It’s pretty nice to finally get the sense that the consequences are finally being self-applied.