As far as I know, DA leader Mmusi Maimane has never revealed how he got the information that President Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC leadership campaign received a R500,000 donation from Bosasa boss Gavin Watson back in 2017.
Perhaps he should. I watched events unfold on Friday: Jacob Zuma pulling out of the Zondo commission of inquiry (and then not) and public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane finding that Ramaphosa had deliberately misled parliament when, upon being ambushed with the Bosasa question by Maimane, he answered untruthfully, saying the money was for his son.
He quickly corrected himself, in writing to the speaker, but the damage was done.
Ramaphosa was answering questions in parliament at the time, late in 2018. The rules allow a questioner to make their main question in writing, which Maimane did, and the other is off the cuff and with no prior warning.
That was Maimane's Bosasa question and that's why Ramaphosa fluffed it. He should have asked for time to answer it.
In a way the whole thing could have been scripted. What if Zuma arranged for his friend Watson to make the Ramaphosa campaign a heavily disguised donation? Pure conjecture, obviously, but what's R500,000 these days anyway?
Then you arrange for Maimane to somehow hear about it from someone he knows and ask a question in parliament.
Then, knowing you've got the public protector watching your back, you're delighted when said Mmusi asks her to investigate your scoop.
Whatever started this, it all came together on Friday. The public protector "confirmed" Ramaphosa deliberately lied to parliament. Mmusi wins! Ramaphosa will fall and the DA will have saved the country. Could there be any greater glory?
Maimane has worked hard in 2019 to insist that Mkhwebane complete her report.
So caught up in the whirl of the public protector's sword has the DA become, it now plans to lay criminal charges of money-laundering, based on Mkhwebane's report and basically alleging Ramaphosa's entire ANC election campaign was a criminal undertaking.
On the one hand, Maimane contends that the public protector is incompetent, and on the other he risks his remaining reputation on her being right about the money-laundering
So Mmusi has certainly helped to get the president into a whole heap of trouble.
Add to that the fact that Ramaphosa is also taking on the public protector in her efforts to burn public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, and the surrounding fog is so thick and so threatening it is impossible to say with any degree of comfort that Ramaphosa can survive.
But then Mmusi has another battle to fight. He is trying to get Mkhwebane fired. Yes, the DA wants parliament to hold an inquiry into Mkhwebane's fitness to hold office. That's because her "findings" on the matter of the Vrede Dairy project were thrown out of court earlier in 2019.
So on the one hand, Maimane contends that the public protector is incompetent and on the other he risks his remaining reputation on her being right about the money-laundering. Why?
No-one expects the DA to hold Ramaphosa's hand through his presidency. If he has knowingly been party to laundering a single cent, he has to go (and, by the way, the replacement isn't DD Mabuza, poor lost chap that he is. It'll be Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma).
But for the moment, for the DA, in the thick of the daily political confrontation, is there no time to consider what comfort you may be providing to Zuma and his acolytes?
For, surely, no-one can still be arguing that Mkhwebane is a neutral observer of our body politic. She may try to be rigorous in the reports that she completes but it is in her selection of what to investigate that she reveals a clear bias in favour of Ramaphosa's ANC opponents.
Maimane is at a fork in the road. One choice is statesmanship. He made an excellent speech on the need to create a new consensus on the creation and distribution of wealth during the debate on the presidency's budget last week. And the DA has cleverly opened the door on co-operation with the ANC in the Western Cape and in local government in Gauteng.
Most South Africans want this. We need a firm and principled political centre and the DA is potentially key to that.
But we are now heading towards a constitutional crisis and the leader of the opposition is right in the middle of it, stoking the flames. He cannot possibly know what the outcome of it all will be.
Yes, Ramaphosa's falling may be good for Maimane because it returns to power the old Zuma crowd off whom the DA fed so heartily. But that would be a cynical game and unworthy of a statesman.
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