Optimism, political commitment and personal allegiances blinded Shaik to the writing on the wall, writes Jeremy Gordin.

On Monday morning, Schabir Shaik's brothers, relatives, attorney and friends sat, grim-faced and disconsolate, on the sunny stoep of a Cape Town hotel.

"C'mon," Shaik said quietly, "think about all those people who are really sick or dying - this is not the end of the world."

The group had just listened, inside the hotel, on a hastily borrowed radio, to the judgment summary delivered in Bloemfontein by Judge Craig Howie, president of the supreme court of appeal (SCA).

Before Howie had started reading, Reeves Parsee, Shaik's attorney, had scribbled a quick list on a piece of paper - count one, appeal upheld/dismissed, count two, appeal upheld/dismissed", and so on. As Howie read, each tick that Parsee made next to each "dismissed" seemed like another blow of an axe on a condemned man's neck.

Howie had dismissed all of Shaik's appeals, except a minor one related to one aspect of the asset forfeiture case against him and his 10 companies. He had also upheld the 15-year sentence given in June last year to Shaik by Judge Hillary Squires in the Durban high court on two counts of corruption and one of fraud.

Shaik did not listen to the broadcast. Instead he went for a walk in the hotel's lush garden, carrying his prayer beads. Yet when Shaik was told the news by Yunis, his younger brother, he appeared calmer than the others.

He even cracked a couple of Shaik-style jokes: "The prisoners better watch out. The new Hannibal Lecter is coming to town," he quipped.

He then quietly agreed with Yunis and Mo, a second younger brother, that it sounded as though the judgment was not going to allow for a constitutional court appeal; that he therefore needed to get back as fast as possible to his family in Durban; and that Mo and Yunis should deal with a press conference at a Cape radio station.

Back in Durban on Monday night, the brothers decided on what Mo called "a media shutdown". "This is no time for spin or rationalisations or being a victim, or any of that bullshit," Yunis said. Schabir spent Tuesday and Wednesday at his home putting the final touches to arrangements related to his businesses but mainly to his wife, Zuleika, and infant son, Yasir.

His lawyers were still looking for issues in the SCA judgment that might enable them to appeal to the constitutional court. But Shaik said he was "at peace" - there needed to be "closure", not vain hope, he said - and he remained calm and controlled.

Even minutes before he "turned himself in" at the Durban high court on Thursday morning, looking unusually diminutive and frail in a white t-shirt, he apologised to those reporters to whom he had given "a hard time" during his trial.

Still, at peace or not, calm or not, it was a tough thing that Shaik did on Thursday morning.

Going to jail at the age of 49; being driven away in a police van for 15 years - even though Shaik is likely to be out in between five and seven years; being driven away from a life in which one has all that one wants materially and especially from a wife, infant son, and family cannot be easy.

If we had been wearing Shaik's (expensive) shoes during the past few days, many of us - and I include myself on the list - might have been seized by abject terror and, if we could have done so, would have fled.

I do not know Shaik extremely well. But I have had eaten a couple of meals with him, had four or five detailed conversations with him, last year spent a wonderful evening with him and his extended family on Eid-ul-Fitr, and was there on Monday when Howie read his judgment.

So I know the Shaiks are stayers, not runners. Durban and KwaZulu-Natal and South Africa in general, seem part of the fabric of their being. Mo, Yunis, third younger brother Chippy, and their father did not go into detention, courtesy of the previous regime's security branch, because they had nothing better to do.

They are deeply committed politically and are proud members of the ANC. If a Shaik cut off his local roots, he would probably, like the proverbial fish out of water, die.

Shaik is by nature optimistic. This does not mean that he wakes up every morning smiling. On the contrary, he can be at times, especially when things are not going his way, sulky and irritable.

But in Shaik there is something of Wilkins Micawber, the Charles Dickens character in David Copperfield: he does tend to believe that sooner or later something will "turn up" for the better.

But, despite this innate optimism, surely Shaik could see the writing on the wall?

It was hard to miss. Alarm bells started ringing about the arms deal in 1999. Shaik was investigated in the early 2000s by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). The Hefer commission - the culmination of an attack, orchestrated by Mo and Mac Maharaj, a former minister, on Bulelani Ngcuka, then head of the NPA - took place in 2003.

Shaik was then charged. He was brought to trial towards the end of 2004. He was found guilty of fraud and tow counts of crruption both of which clearly implicated Jacob Zuma, then the deputy president, in wrongdoing. He was refused leave to appeal by Squires on the main corruption count. And Zuma was fired from the deputy presidency as a result of Squires's judgment, and then charged.

Why then did Shaik continue being so hopeful, so apparently sure that the SCA judges would, at least to some extent, see what it was really all about, even if Squires could not? Why did Shaik go on proclaiming his innocence?

The answer, I believe, is that Shaik has genuinely believed, and still does, that he is innocent. He does not believe that he is innocent in terms of the law. He would have to be deluded to think that.

Shaik believes that he is innocent because he did not do anything contra to the mores of the "culture", the way of life, in which he grew up, in which he was living during the 1990s, and in which he believed.

Excluding the fraud charge, related to hiding money paid to Zuma, a charge which Shaik does not in any case contest, consider the state's case against Shaik - in its basic form.

The state's case was that Shaik had been paying Zuma money in exchange for Zuma's help in business ventures in which Zuma could exercise influence because of his political position. Shaik scratched Zuma's back and expected Zuma to scratch his in return.

But this was exactly the way things had worked for years.

Zuma had been commander of the underground cell in which the Shaiks operated. And one took care of one's comrades, and they took care of one. The ANC had won a victory and the party was the centre of the world.

Yes, there was a government that was supposedly separate from the party and there was a separate justice system - that is how a constitutional democracy had to work.

But, even though Zuma was an official MEC or minister, a provincial or state politician, he was still the same old ANC comrade, wasn't he? And Shaik had to help him out - Zuma was having distracting financial troubles - and Zuma would presumably assist him.

Moreover, black economic empowerment was becoming the order of the day. It was time the country's riches and opportunities were shared among everyone, especially those who had opposed apartheid. What was so bad about this?

This was the way Shaik and others thought. It was precisely for these reasons that there was such a deep level of indignation on the part of Maharaj, Shaik and Zuma when they came under investigation by the NPA. They had fought selflessly, and often at great personal cost, in the struggle. How could their own people be imputing criminal motives to them? It was unthinkable.

This was why Maharaj and Shaik assumed that something had to be "wrong" with Ngcuka - culminating in the Hefer commission - and why, for example, Zuma goes on claiming that he is the victim of a conspiracy. (And that this may be partially true does not help.)

Two questions that Shaik's defence team never asked were these: given the extent to which Shaik bust his financial gut for Zuma, did he receive a payback of equal value? And, if not, why did Shaik continue assisting Zuma?

Presumably the questions were not asked because the answers do not matter in terms of the law. All that mattered legally was to prove Shaik's intentions.

But the answers, if one looks at the state's evidence, were that Shaik did not get anything of commensurate value from Zuma in exchange for his financial assistance and that, if Shaik was in it simply for the money, it made no sense for him to go on helping Zuma. He could have simply called it a day and left Zuma in the lurch.

But Shaik could not do this - because Zuma was his friend and ANC commander, not only because Zuma was destined for high places.

Nor does this mean, by the way, that Zuma was a mean and calculating person. The relationship between the two men was a symbiotic one that came out of the struggle years and that both had been living for most of their adult lives.

According to Islamic lore, a person knows for certain that it is dawn - and that therefore, during Ramadan, he or she must fast - when he or she is able to see a thread held between the thumb and forefinger of one hand and the thumb and forefinger of the other.

The transition in South Africa - from the old underground ways to the laws of a state and national government - has been taking place for the past 12 years, which seems a long time. For some ANC members it has in a sense been as quick and imperceptible as that moment at dawn when the thread suddenly becomes visible.

Unfortunately for Shaik, he did not really see it. This is why he believes he is innocent and that is why he has gone to prison.

With acknowledgement to Jeremy Gordin and Sunday Independent.