I can't think of anything worse than spending day after day in a gloomy courtroom, having my financial peccadilloes exposed to the obvious delight of the media. Apart from the tedium of legal procedure and the unwelcome publicity, there are also the costs to think about.

But this is precisely what Jacob Zuma wished for and his wish has now been granted by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), which wants him to respond to two charges of corruption.

Good defence lawyers don’t come cheap and Zuma’s financial affairs are known to be chaotic — so one wonders who will be paying for his defence team.

If I were Zuma I would have cut my losses after the outcome of the Schabir Shaik trial and opted for a quiet retirement in rural KwaZulu-Natal, but clearly all that talk about being found guilty by the media has affected his judgment.

For the next few months the investigators will be digging away, going through Zuma’s accounts and checking whether his personal relationships were tainted by corruption. Only then, when the prosecutors are confident that they have a watertight case against the former deputy president, will they announce the final list of charges.

During this period Zuma will be politically impotent and under immense personal strain. After all, the NPA is out to win and will be digging very deep to find the evidence it needs.

According to legal experts, the NPA is not allowed to use the court records of the Shaik case — and anything the judge said during that trial is inadmissible. So my guess is that the NPA will be opening many new cans of worms during the next few months, and other unhealthy relationships may well emerge.

Apart from providing some amusement value and helping us sell newspapers, what possible good can Zuma’s trial serve?

The loony triumvirate of the ANC Youth League, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party clearly believes that Zuma has a better-than-sporting chance of clearing his name and returning to high political office.

One of the things I discovered during my days in the bond market was how to cut a bad position. Never fall in love with a portfolio of underperforming investments in the hope that things will get better. Sell them, take the knock and concentrate on a new strategy. The loony triumvirate has much to learn.

However, let’s hypothesise and assume that Zuma is found innocent. That would also imply that Shaik is not guilty of having had a corrupt relationship with the then deputy president. Would Zuma expect the slate to be wiped clean and to be returned to power immediately? Would the ANC obligingly remove the incumbent deputy president and reopen the front bench to him? Would there be no hard feelings? I don’t think so, somehow.

The trial of a deputy president is not an amusing sideshow; it’s an unwelcome focus on the less savoury aspects of our new democracy. It has the potential to be politically explosive and, even if Zuma is convicted, it will still be a Pyrrhic victory. The best thing for South Africa would have been for Zuma and the loony triumvirate to accept the findings of Judge Hilary Squires and for Zuma to accept his political destiny and be allowed to fade quietly into well-deserved oblivion.

With acknowledgements to David Bullard and the Sunday Times.