Yesterday was one of those Sundays when the papers seemed finally to have figured out that they are there to provide material for this column. Where to begin? Jacob Zuma’s son and nephew trade blows at a vigil for a deceased family member (City Press), ANC secretary-general (the saintly) Kgalema Motlanthe is to be investigated by the police for his possible part in an e-mail scam to smear the deputy president, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, among others (Sunday Times), a white technician at bankrupt state-owned arms maker Denel calls a black co-worker a “kaffir” for putting on his dust coat (Sunday Independent, or at least its business supplement) and Anton Rupert pulls advertising for his vast luxury goods empire in the trendy UK design magazine Wallpaper after it calls Afrikaans the “ugliest language in the world”.

Actually, the story of the day was also in Rapport, which reported that it had come into possession of a transcript of a statement (apparently an interrogation by the Scorpions) of a senior manager in one of Schabir Shaik’s companies in which he claims Shaik procured women for Jacob Zuma. One, called Robin, was, according to the manager, Zuma’s “pomp” and was handsomely paid for her efforts. The transcript apparently implies that Shaik himself might not have been immune to the lady’s charms. Old Schabir, it seems, looked after JZ in every conceivable way. I wonder whether more details of the statement might emerge at Zuma’s corruption trial next year.

I was going to declare Zuma my Man of the Year in this column today, and his apparent zest for life really does hold out hope for any man approaching his sixties.

But the award has to go to Thabo Mbeki, the president, who for much of the year has looked pretty much down and out as the Zuma tsunami swept about the corridors of power. All Mbeki has done is to shut up and, after firing Zuma as deputy president of the country, wait. I have come to the conclusion that Mbeki knows everything, rather like the Eye of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings movies.

So much for the tsunami. It has shrunk to a ripple. Mbeki, as the Sunday Times story referred to above may show, is sweeping away his enemies with a ruthlessness and a resolve we are unlikely to see in our politics for many a year. ?

With acknowledgements to Peter Bruce and the Business Day.