The decision of the full bench of the Supreme Court of Appeal yesterday finally puts to rest an argument that has haunted South African politics for close on five years. Durban businessman Schabir Shaik has steadfastly argued that his donations to his friend Jacob Zuma were nothing more than acts of altruism made in the spirt of the new age.

The state has argued that these acts were made with an ulterior motive, and that the donations were therefore acts of corruption. At last, barring unlikely appeals to the Constitutional Court, the book on this argument is now closed. Closed too is the book on the argument that this was a malicious prosecution.

But by putting to rest one dispute, the case immediately poses another. Having found the donor was acting corruptly, the question now is whether the recipient was acting corruptly too. The appeal court’s finding also provides pointers here too. For the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) to claim, as it did yesterday, that Shaik’s failed appeal does not mean there is a stronger case against Zuma is simply wishful thinking.

Although it’s true that Shaik’s failed appeal does not automatically mean Zuma is guilty, Cosatu is minimising the overlap. Both were intimately involved in every one of the 238 payments totalling over R1,2m. Zuma was named in the encrypted fax, which corroborated an additional charge involving R500000. The law itself finds both the recipient and the donor in a corrupt relationship equally guilty of the crime. Consequently, if it were not obvious before, it is obvious now that there is a case for Zuma to face.

The failed appeal also strengthens this argument in other ways. First, the decision was unanimous. All five judges could find nothing wrong with any of the findings of the trial judge in the criminal case — not on evidentiary grounds, not in terms of the findings themselves, and not in terms of the severity of the sentences. Second, the problem Zuma now faces is that many of the factual findings of the trial court have not only been adjudicated on but also scrutinised and approved on appeal. Zuma’s inability to challenge a whole swathe of the evidence concerning the movement of money and the veracity of documents has been established and confirmed.

The most critical of these is the encrypted fax, which was the subject of the trial within a trial concerning its admissibility based on an argument that it was hearsay evidence. Here the appeal court went even further than the trial court, not only confirming the trial court’s judgment, but finding an additional basis for its admissibility.

It is true of course that one person cannot be tried in absentia on the basis on the evidence presented against someone else. But this is a distortion of the argument. The question is not whether Zuma should be convicted, but whether he should be tried. And clearly, based on the finding of the appeal court, the argument against bringing charges was indubitably weakened yesterday.

More broadly, a line in the sand was drawn yesterday. Everywhere in SA, the relationship between businesspeople and politicians has been blurred. Politicians have almost invariably been the beneficiaries of black empowerment transactions designed to redraw the wealth map distorted by apartheid. But the process has asked critical questions of their relationship.

Shaik clearly overstepped that line. But the virtue of the judgment lies not only in the conviction of a corrupter, but also in the salutary message it sends out to politicians who might want a short cut to wealth and to businesspeople who want a short cut to winning contracts. And that message is this: make sure your deals are done at arm’s length. Anything less, and you too could be on the receiving end of 15 years in jail.

With acknowledgement to Business Day.