Hmm, I'm glad to see that my man Jacob G Zuma is continuing to cover himself in glory.

One used to have to wait until Sundays and the arrival on the crazy paving - thump-a-dump - of The Sunday Independent to find out what was happening at the SABC, courtesy of Edwin "Naai-diddley" Naidu.

For the musically minded among us, the nickname comes from an old Animals' song, "Bo Diddley" - "Naai diddley, Naai diddley, where've you been?" and so on. Remember Eric Burdon (and the Animals)? Twenty years ago, going for a late night walk through the mist in search of some Chinese food, hard by Peta "Goody" Gorshel's San Francisco apartment, I saw Burdon doing a small-time gig in a local bar. But I digress ...)

However, the TSI doesn't arrive any more and one doesn't see Naai-diddley's byline any more. Has he fallen foul of the Venda Nostra? Or has he moved full-time to Top Gear or whatever those infinitely banal motoring pages are called?

I simply don't know. Just as well (for him) that he's gone, really. If Naidu were still at the TSI, he and his various SABC deep throats - well, I know of one - would be hauled before the media tribunal more often than I change my socks and I do so pretty much daily.

By the way - and I am going to digress again - I see that Morag Ben-Yitzhak's book page has also gone the way of all flesh, leading one to believe that the Venda Nostra have achieved what better men - Battersby, J and Rantao, J - could not achieve: they have killed Morag's book page and turned it into some sort of silly add-on page in the lifestyle supplement.  No wonder the ANC is pissed with the media.

Seriously, though: Sic transit gloria mundi. First of all, whatever you might say about that page and its editor, and I have been known to say a lot about both, Ben-Yitzhak has been running that thing for a long time - she's kept the flag of book reviewing and reading etc flying in all weathers for almost two decades - and that page did have its fine moments. Second, what am I going to do for irritation on a weekend? Some people have no consideration, really.

But I was talking about Zuma and the SABC. Nowadays one doesn't have to wait till Sunday: according to the learned Business Day, Barbara Masakela has resigned from the board of the SABC.

Apparently she has lost patience with the chairman Ben Ngubane and CEO Solly Mokoetle. According to the story, Ngubane told some of the directors that "the president of the republic" had instructed him to appoint Phil "Chippa" Molefe as head of news. He did so. Whereupon the board cancelled the appointment of Chippa - but since then Ben has refused to hold a meeting with anyone ...

(And why by the way would Zuma want pompous Chippa in the job? For the same reason he wanted Vusi Mona in the presidency, I suppose ...He and Lakela Kaunda just do not get it, do they?...) 

I love it. No one can mire and muddy a situation with the aplomb of JGZ -  and then walk away from it in the firm belief that it will sort itself out. It's gorgeous.

Vide the Eishkom matter, where Zuma screwed things up in a meeting with Bobby Godsell, and then left everyone else, including Yunis "don't call me Gupta" Shaik, to pick up the pieces, which they're still doing.

Or remember when JGZ assured the taxi drivers that he would "meet them soon" to sort out their grievances about the bus rapid transport system? They're still waiting. And not so long ago Zuma told the esteemed members of the fourth estate he would meet them to "sort out" anxieties about the new information bill and the media tribunal.

But by yesterday Zuma forgot - and, as he emerged from days in Xhosa-land, he said that "human rights" were trampled on by the media and that the media had to be brought in line with the constitution (sic).

I wonder to which human rights JGZ was referring? The right of ministers to drive around in absurdly expensive motor vehicles while folk are starving? The right of a financially struggling politician to be helped out by the Shaik brothers? The right of the wife of a polygamous oke to have someone else slip her the big chiluga? What? 

Zuma then went on to explain two things. First, the ANC had discussed a media tribunal etc at Polokwane and it was therefore "legitimate" to have one. You hear that? I think, therefore I am. My wife annoys, therefore I know she exists. If the ANC has discussed something, it is therefore legitimate. What was Zuma smoking in Umngazi? I presume it was as good as the stuff I smoked when I was last there. (That was about 25 years ago - I had the pleasure of hiking for three days behind a certain female person who is now the ex-wife of quite a famous journalist and author ... ah, what bliss it was in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heaven!)

Second, Zuma said, the media claimed it was the watchdog of democracy but it is not democratically elected. So who the hell do the media think they are anyway?

What wit. Saul Bellow once remarked, to the irritation of the politically correct, that he would have liked to know who the Zulu Tolstoy was. Well, at least we have a Zulu Disraeli in the making.

Zuma said further - according to the report I read - that "he would call for debate on the media in the ANC's letter at the weekend". The presidency is not still putting out that thing that Mbeki initiated, is it? In the days before the rinderpest, when I was a working journalist, it used to land in my in-basket every bloody Friday. Oy vey iz mir.

Have you ever read that wonderful biography of Zuma that I wrote? You ought to do so, you know (buy here). I don't get paid that much these days and my daughter wants to go overseas next year for her birthday. The book may be found in all fine bookshops and many others besides. Anyway, sommer there in chapter 19 - on page 299/300 of the new edition - I wrote:

"I am also told that there is a certain management technique, the main element of which is the strict avoidance of ‘taking on' other people's problems. It's the opposite of being a mother hen. It is also, I suppose, the (healthy) opposite of the adolescent fantasy that you can control the world. At any rate, Zuma is the master of a technique that, so to speak, allows the executives to fight it out in the boardroom while he calmly eats a sandwich in his office."

He is also apparently the master of a technique that lets his executives as well as parliament and the ANC give it to the media right up the wazoo without the benefit of petroleum jelly while he calmly talks obfuscatory codswallop.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter