The trial of businessman Schabir Shaik is in one way a battle over the guilt or innocence of one man on fraud and corruption charges. But in another way it is a much more significant proxy battle, not only between groups outside the court but also between two political tendencies within the African National Congress (ANC).

Although Deputy President Jacob Zuma is not there he looms large over the trial. His name is mentioned every day, and it is the state's case that he formed part of a corrupt conspiracy with Shaik and French arms company Thales.

Zuma's political opponents or quasipolitical opponents are missing too the group of exiled ANC politicians dominant in the negotiations process of the early '90s, most obviously represented now by President Thabo Mbeki.

The interests of the two groups have mostly coincided. But occasionally they have parted ways, and it has never been more obvious than now, as Mbeki battles for his legacy and Zuma battles to win the succession. Until now the differences have been easy to paper over, but suddenly the stakes have ratcheted up a notch. On the one hand, the authority of the presidency is at stake. But for Zuma and his coterie there is the all-too important issue of the political succession.

Although never openly expressed, the two groupings' approaches to politics, and their underlying philosophies, show shades of difference. The Zuma grouping may argue the "negotiators *1", for want of a better description, have a less forceful and aggressive political style. They are more inclined to seek compromises. By contrast, Zuma's grouping may see itself as more forthright and determined.

The "negotiators", on the other hand, probably see the Zuma grouping as too cavalier and careless, perhaps slightly unrealistic in their approach and less able to get things done.

The philosophical difference lies to some extent along the business-union divide, with the "negotiators" guided by the principle of balancing interests between commerce and the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (Cosatu) under the banner of "a better life for all", that is something for everybody. Zuma's position is less clear, but Cosatu's recent spat with government forms part of the jockeying process. Neither Cosatu nor the Zuma grouping is above exploiting the strains in the alliance the question is simply who will be using whom.

Neither is it any accident that the differences in political style emerge from within KwaZulu-Natal, the most fractious and contested of regions in SA. The Zuma grouping learnt their politics in a rougher, more bitter, context.

And it all goes back to those heady days of the failed Operation Vula, when the militants within the ANC tried to lay the basis for a military alternative in the early days of the transition. The generous view was that it was intended as an insurance policy should negotiations fail. The less generous view is that it was to be used as an opportunity to balance the ANC's military disadvantage. It was, in other words, about settling scores.

The plan failed when exposed by a routine security-forces surveillance operation that stumbled on the much larger plan to infiltrate weapons and personnel. Its failure, and the ANC's embarrassment at being exposed as a duplicitous negotiating partner, probably contributed to an easier transition by weakening the hand of militants. But even now, years later, the imprint of Vula, with its implicit distrust and intrigue, is still discernible. The put-down still rankles *2.

And so it has been that this undercurrent has wound its way through SA's post-democracy politics, surfacing occasionally, particularly in some bizarre instances of political manoeuvring like the absurd notion of a plot to kill Mbeki and in machinations of those seeking to discredit the Scorpions and its former head, Bulelani Ngcuka. And now and again in the Shaik trial.

Most political commentators have simply ignored these incidents as aberration. But they are so persistent not to mention intriguing that they are impossible to discard entirely, particularly since they may be used by one side or the other in the succession race. They have the tantalising quality of Soviet-era deception and stratagem.

And this grand facade of high politics has become weirdly focused on a small wood-panelled courtroom in Durban, where appropriately this week politicians finally made their entrance. Except of course it was the wrong politicians *3. But they were raising the right issues.

The politicians were Independent Democrats president Patricia de Lille and Inkatha Freedom Party MP Gavin Woods. The two politicians form two-thirds of the triumvirate (with the Democratic Alliances's Raenette Taljaard) that has formed the backbone of the political opposition to the arms deal.

Both, once more, refused to say who their informants were, although both are either known now or will be soon. De Lille's original informant *4 was the strange and vacillating Bheki Jacobs, a former Soviet-trained intelligence agent, who wrote the report that prompted De Lille to raise the issue in Parliament. This began the downward slide that has culminated in the Shaik trial *5.

To read the report is to enter a world of multifaceted intrigue. It mentions almost everyone you can imagine, including former president FW de Klerk and some of his aides. It is full of spelling mistakes, fanciful ideas, weird notions and strangely a whole range of allegations *5 that have ended up being borne out by subsequent events. ANC MP Tony Yengeni's conviction, for example, traces its origin to this document.

And in the conclusion of this document is an allegation that is extraordinarily prescient: "It also appears that these companies, groups and individuals are using the arms deal to create and finance an economic and political centre within the ANC to undermine Mbeki *6."

In one sense, this is hard to credit, given that Mbeki himself spent so much time and effort getting the deal approved. For example, the document itself credits Mbeki for reintroducing the German bids for the shipbuilding contracts.

But there is a strange sense of truth about this statement, given the cast of characters and the history of those currently and formerly involved.

While De Lille was the whistle-blower, Woods was the quiet academic and an honourable man, almost inevitably treated harshly by the political machinations of the cut-and-thrust world of politics.

The harsh treatment took the form of his gradual isolation as head of Parliament's standing committee on public accounts, which was symbolised by a letter from Zuma implicitly castigating Woods for discrediting government and destabilising the country, no less.

Zuma helpfully passed the letter not only to the press but also to the contracting parties in the arms deal. This for supporting the investigation into the arms deal suggested by the auditor-general. There is some question about whether Zuma actually authored the letter. It bears the feisty stamp of Mbeki's legal adviser, Mojanku Gumbi.

But Woods may yet prevail as the trial winds down. And he still has one card to play. He too has a source. And it was revealed at the trial this source was someone senior in the defence department.

Even after an exhaustive trial, this story has some distance to run.

Cohen is editor at large.

With ackowledgement to Tim Cohen and Business Day.

*1 More likely the other way round. The Negotiators are excellent at negotiating large donations to charitable trusts, albeit that payments seem to take forever to materialise and then one must definitely use a proxy to get cross with the beneficiary and threaten them with all manner of unpleasantness.

Or at re-negotiating the repayment terms of a R100 000 loan over three months to a R96 000 repayment after five years - with similar levels of unpleasantness.

Luckily this proxy never became the Director-General of Negotiators.

*2 Ask Mo, he's still rankled.

*3 It should have been more Accused.

*4 It's possible that  the organisation to which Bheki Jacobs belonged, i.e. Congress Consultants, owned the PC or laptop on which the de Lille Dossier was typed, he may even have operated the wordprocessor at times, but he was not the provider of the content of this Dossier. If anyone reads the Dossier, it should be easy to see that there were multiple information sources, some of them were South Africans, some of them were not South Africans, some of them were ANC members, some of them were not ANC members, some of them were Africans of Nguni origin, some of them were not  Africans of Nguni origin, some of them were White, some of them were not  White, some of them might even have been MPs.

But they had one thing in common - they were all very concerned about how the country's money was being wasted and about the feeding frenzy that was developing among the insider elite around the deep trough of the DIP and the NIP.

*5  Viva, Uranian, Viva.

*6 This is classic Soviet-style counter-intelligence or counter-counter-intelligence. Reason - to mask the origin and identity of the source(s).