Public money to build more of it

completed and that if it had been completed it should be released — but also said that it had been completed, which was unfair because it had been completed without an opportunity for him to say his say (though, in reality, he had had multiple chances to do just that).

Days later, Zuma engaged his prior self in vigorous legal argument.

Previously, Zuma explained, he may have made what seemed like a concession that undermined his own case. However, what he had previously said had been wrong in law, he now said, and he could not be held to a concession that was wrong in law.

That particular skirmish with himself, though, was simply a warm-up for the main event of legal weirdness that the high court in Pretoria on Wednesday said required a stern rebuke in the form of a personal costs order against Zuma.

Things got really strange when it came to the “typing error”.

In October last year, Zuma was furiously fighting against the release of Madonsela’s report on state capture. On October 24, Zuma filed papers including the assertion that, if Madonsela had indeed completed her report, “then in that event the report should be released”.

The release of the report was the exact opposite of what Zuma actually sought.

There was just one problem, the court said this week: everyone else knew — and Zuma should have known — 10 days earlier that the report was, in fact, final. In other words, Zuma had blown his own action completely out of the water.

So Zuma told the court that the argument for the release of a report, if it was final, had been a typing error. He had intended to say that if it was final then it should “NOT” be released, he now held.

Except that this could not be true, the court judged on Wednesday, because the rest of Zuma’s arguments flowed from the assertion that a final report should be released. If there had been a typing error about the release of the report, then that gave rise to an “irreconcilable contradiction” with his other arguments.

“This is where the president comes unstuck,” said the court, though it stopped short of finding that he had committed perjury, saying this had not been its task.

Zuma remained somewhat unhinged, legally. He now found himself arguing that a report that he said was not final should be reviewed and set aside, even though the law is clear that only final actions are subject to that kind of review.

Painted into a corner, where “on all possible interpretations, the report had to be released”, Zuma finally conceded the fight and offered to pay the costs of the entire affair — with money from the state.

Yet Zuma had been “clear and unambiguous” that he was defending himself as a person, not as a president, said the court, and he had never once argued that his office would suffer if the report was released.

Between his conduct and the personal nature of his interest, it was only appropriate that Zuma should pay costs out of his own pocket for his failed attempt to interdict the release of the report, the court said.

That was separate from the personal costs order against Zuma for his application to review the report after it is eventually released.