The spectacle of a South African cabinet minister standing down under pressure is a rare one. Justice Minister Penuell Maduna has made himself controversial in the past, but the speed with which the twister of the Jacob Zuma affair swept him up and then dumped him has been extraordinary. In less than a week, he went from asking to be included in the Hefer inquiry (presumably to be cleared by it) to announcing his decision not to seek re-election next year and hence, in effect, signalling his resignation from the cabinet.

And so, citing a desire to limit damage to the ANC from the growing storm of allegations of corruption and abuse, Maduna becomes the first high-profile casualty of this sorry mess. Damage control must indeed now be a major concern of the ruling party and its leadership, but Maduna's announcement will have done little to relieve the bewilderment of the public at large.

Here is a web of intrigue whose threads run back to the government's ill-conceived arms deal, and caught up in it along with Maduna are some of the country's most powerful personages, not least deputy president Jacob Zuma and national public prosecutions director Bulelani Ngcuka, but which are the spiders and which the flies is not yet possible to discern.

For the perplexed person in the street there are some comforting signs amid the confusion. With Judge Joos Hefer opening his inquiry tomorrow, appropriate action is being taken to disentangle and test some of the allegations that have been made. Also, undeterred by the efforts to stymie him with irrelevant accusations about past links to the apartheid government, Ngcuka is pressing on with the investigation of Zuma's role.

These are important affirmations that no person, no matter how well-placed, is above the law.

Meanwhile, Maduna's observation that the "noise" of the flurry of allegations prevents him and his colleagues from concentrating on their work echoes a concern expressed by this newspaper only last week. For a host of reasons, not least the effective maintenance of ordinary administration, this whole matter needs to be brought into the open and cleared up without further prevarication.

With acknowledgement to The Natal Witness.