The gist of Ramaphosa’s testimony was that the truth should not be sought from him

As was the case in the worlds created by Lewis Carroll, South Africans are accustomed to stepping through the looking glass into surreal wonderlands. We can, like the White Queen, with aplomb “believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast”.

But when a rotund, elderly billionaire politician who is easily shocked describes himself in terms more appropriate to the depiction of a dashing resistance fighter behind enemy lines, it is too much. Crossing that impossibility threshold would strain even the White Queen.

This week, President Cyril Ramaphosa explained to the Zondo commission that when confronted with the mayhem and shenanigans that was rife in former president Jacob Zuma’s administration, he chose to do nothing, say nothing.

It was, he explained to a visibly sceptical commission, not cowardice but a canny strategy.

He remained in the post of deputy president to “resist” the looters and “turn things around”. This meant “staying in the arena”, although resistance had to be calibrated so as “not to be confrontational”.

The course he took was better, Ramaphosa said, than the four alternatives. These were “to resign; to speak out; to acquiesce and abet; or to keep quiet and remain silent”.

Subsequent events have shown that Ramaphosa the Resistance Rambo wasn’t very successful. As he explains, this was because he knew nothing about what was happening. In military parlance, this is known as the “fog of war”. In politics, it’s “plausible deniability”.

The Cabinet worked “in silos”, so though he was the second-highest ranking person in the country, he couldn’t see what was happening.

Most of the time, he “knew no more than anyone else”. In fact, “nobody had line of sight” of what exactly was going on. Especially, one can deduce, if one kept one’s eyes are firmly shut.

He managed not to attribute any blame to any specific ANC politician or functionary, ever. It was always “some people” doing unacceptable things “sometimes” or “on occasion”. There were “lapses”, “errors” and “system failures”, but not a single name attached to a single person, not once.

The gist of Ramaphosa’s testimony was that the truth should not be sought from him, the president.

It remained yet to be divined through the use of his favourite governing tools: sundry “investigations”, “inquiries” and that other ANC favourite, “in the process of getting to the bottom of what happened”.

This week was Ramaphosa’s second round with the Zondo commission. The first time around, it was as president of the ANC. This time it was as president of the Republic of South Africa.

The relative weight Ramaphosa attaches to the competing presidential personas can be quickly assessed on the evidence of his Twitter biography. Who is surprised that Ramaphosa lists his ANC rank above his national honour?

So it should be no surprise that this week’s testimony as the nation’s president carried through the leitmotif of the sessions as party president.

As he explained at that April session, the party recognised that “some” in the ANC were “advertently and inadvertently complicit” in corruption. However, this did not mean that “the ANC is itself corrupt or uniquely affected by corruption”.

He concluded then: “We acknowledge … yes, things went horribly wrong, but we are here to correct that. We do that with humility and our heads bowed.”

This time around, Ramaphosa said that part of the ANC’s “renewal process” is ridding itself of the corrupt in its ranks. He said he believes the renewal process is “going well”.

At this point in the Zondo proceedings, there was chaos and consternation. The White Queen had dropped stone dead.