During the first half of this month, I attended a conference and also had a week off (for good behaviour) in Shaytân-e Bozorg, which is Persian for "the Great Satan", aka the United States.

I did not meet anybody with little horns or cloven hooves. But I did sink even deeper into debt by spending a great deal of money, belonging to the bank, in the Apple shop. This is perhaps merely another way of falling into the hands of Lucifer.

Wanting to hear and see some news about South Africa and President Jacob G Zuma, I also watched television on various occasions. I thus suffered manfully through countless debates between the Republicans, represented by a youngster who looks like rugby player Joost van der Westhuizen (I think his name is Paul Ryan), and the Democrats, represented by President Barack Obama or various handlangers, on the US debt crisis.

I also had to listen to and see that fellow with the bizarre hair-style, Donald Trump, who believes that it is of national importance that Obama was not born in the US but in Brakpan or Timbuktu.

In short, the US, if one can judge by its media, is not much interested in us or Zuma. Perhaps this is just as well. The debt crisis and Trump are so bone-numbingly tedious that, given half a chance, many Americans could become disciples of Julius Malema and that remarkable trial about dubul' ibhunu that, as far as I could tell, put a notable number of big-bellied half-wits on parade.

Probably also just as well that Zuma's not getting any media coverage in the US. According to the local media - which my gorgeous wife kindly left piled up on the kitchen table for me - Zuma is facing a new slew of troubles.   

These include an ANC that is allegedly at war with itself, a deteriorated public service, mostly shambolic local governments, and a reprise of the infamous Special Browse Mole report. The narrative of the new report suggests a plot remarkably similar to the non-existent plot against Thabo Mbeki in 2001 by Tokyo Sexwale, Mathews Phosa and Cyril "McDonald's" Ramaphosa. These plot compilers, wherever and whoever they are, really need a new script writer.

Most seriously for Zuma, it seems to me, is that the ANC's local government election campaign has apparently been something of a disaster.

At a Freedom Day rally, I was taken aback by a serious-minded, extraordinarily loyal and senior ANC member saying rather matter-of-factly to me: "It's clear that we're going to lose seats to Zille and the DA. I don't doubt this for a moment. She's been doing much better what we used to do so well - going door-to-door."

He also said rather gloomily: "I don't think that Bheki Cele is a very good commissioner."

I wondered for a second what the generalissimo had to do with local elections and then realised my interlocutor was referring to the appalling killing of Andries Tatane in Meqheleng, just outside Ficksburg, in the Free State.

Then, of course, on the very day that Zuma did go walkabout, in a cleaned-up area of Soweto (around the Hector Pietersen Museum) - wanting to demonstrate (rather lamely) that not only the DA can run a major city - the SABC treated us to images of people of Zandspruit, northwest of Johannesburg, saying that unless somebody did something about service delivery, they sure as hell weren't going to vote. (Do you think that SABC was aware of the irony of the juxtaposition of the two sets of images?)

So: is Zuma going to get a wake-up call in the forthcoming local elections? One would hope so. Telling your rulers via the ballot box that they need to get their acts together is one of things that democracy is supposed to be about. But I suspect that voting for any party but the ANC is still anathema to most South Africans.

We shall see on May 18. Either way, though, even if many voters can't bring themselves to place an X anywhere but next to the ANC, Zuma needs to start paying careful attention. It really is the first time that some South Africans are showing palpable irritation - and it's not going to be fixed by subscribing to risible plots or wandering around the safe parts of Soweto with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Jeremy Gordin is a veteran journalist and director, Justice Project, Wits Journalism. This article first appeared in the Daily Dispatch.

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