"YOU'RE a despot," Christopher Hitchens once said, "if you can make your subjects feel sorry for you." Here at the Mahogany Ridge we've dug up that remark from the late author and journalist before when writing about President Jacob Zuma, but it seems particularly apposite to use it again given his emotional outburst during question time in Parliament on Thursday.

His family, the president said, has been hurt by all this hoo-hah over his home at Nkandla and -- extraordinarily enough -- it had nothing to do with him. (We're still trying to wrap our heads around the particular dynamics of that assertion.)

"I have never asked government to build a home for me, and it has not done so. My residence in Nkandla has been paid for by the Zuma family. All the buildings and every room we use in that residence, was built by ourselves and not by government."

Ignore, if you can, the Zumantics and the ease with which he has twisted the meaning of words here -- government has never been accused of building the president a home, only of substantially upgrading the existing pile -- and feel instead the chief's hurt and pain; he has, he said, been "convicted, painted black [and] called the first-class corrupt man on facts that are not tested" over the R248-million or so in public money that has been seemingly been blown on the little TLC, as the realtors say, that was required to turn the crib into a national key point.

Zuma is correct when he claims that accommodation for police and army units in the compound did not fall within his ambit. That, I would humbly suggest, is perhaps why there is such interest in all the goings on behind the fortress fence . Why then is he so dismissive of inspection visits? He described, for example, the Democratic Alliance's recent attempt as a "trip to come and photograph my house and make a laughing stock of my family", but this was simply not the DA's intention. If he has nothing to hide, what's the problem?

In any event, we have some idea, thanks to news reports, of the work undertaken at Nkandla. We also know what government has paid for this work -- and therein lay fears, considering that this is the taxpayer's tom, that costs have been grossly inflated. Suspicions of widespread corruption and looting are not without basis.

There is, Zuma told parliament, bullet-proof glass -- but not in all the windows of the houses. The state has paid R3-million here -- enough glass, according to a City Press report, to cover an eight-storey building.

One contractor, Bonelena Construction, was paid R66-million to build 25 houses, thought to be accommodation for bodyguards -- R2.6-million per unit. Another, the aptly-named Moneymine 310, was paid R48-million to build six units -- R8-million each. In other words, someone in the building industry was having a good Christmas this year. And these were not the only examples of exorbitant costs at Nkandla. The sums that government has doled out for elevators, fencing, security systems and other items there were way beyond a joke, according to those that spoke to City Press.

Zuma, however, has insisted that all of this has nothing to do with him, and to that end, a great many of his chums have rallied to the cause of protecting him from undue scrutiny.

First, there was the ruling party's determined refusal to allow the tabling of a motion of no-confidence in the Zuma by opposition parties. Clearly they want to shield president from damaging revelations that would have emerged during debate on the motion. Believe me, and as the ANC are only too well aware, there's a richness of embarrassments out there.

Then there was the SA Communist Party's extraordinary notion that it should now be against the law to insult the president. In this regard, Brett Murray's The Spear and the work of other satirists have again been singled out as examples of this particularly heinous offence. The SACP secretary general, Blade Nzimande, was on SAfm on Friday morning, railing away at foreign notions such as satire and metaphor, the sort of nuanced, clever-clogs "white people" stuff alien to African culture.

Nzimande did, incidentally, attempt to clarify that the African way was to distinguish between "criticism" and "insult", and that -- ha! -- it was important that we respect the presidency; care should be taken, then, that when we criticise the man, we may disrespect the institution.

I don't know if it's of any help, but here at the Ridge, our insults are never directed at the office, only at the chop.

This article first appeared in The Weekend Argus.

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