Zuma's last hour
As we await Jacob Zuma's exit from the presidency, it's very difficult to find an ordinary voice that still argues for his prolonged stay in office.
If you do speak to someone expressing that view it actually comes as a surprise. There is a groundswell of dissent, South Africans saying - enough already, just go. With his own party recalling its cadre, there's really no option available to Zuma that doesn't involve embarrassing the party further or plunging it into further disarray, other than resigning.
For the second time in its history of governing, the ANC is pushing out the president of the country, one of its own. This says a lot about the party and the chaotic state it finds itself in, let alone its ability to see a presidential term through without huffing and puffing and blowing its own candidate's presidential house down.
Jacob Zuma is however no Thabo Mbeki - he's not going meek and mildly, he's fighting to the end. He's making sure that we sit in front of our TV screens or are glued to our radios thinking - We are going nowhere slowly.
But his endgame is near and in this time he reminds me more of a defiant Robert Mugabe who last year, with resignation speech in hand it seemed, addressed the Zimbabwean nation and spoke complete nonsense - no resignation in sight, until his party intervened.
What opposition parties are saying
Opposition parties are adding their voices, in the thick of things, threatening legal action, wanting a vote of no confidence and even parliament dissolved. They've also called on a motion of no confidence to be brought forward from the scheduled 22nd of February. This all might not be necessary if Zuma heeds the party call for him to go now. The ANC is at pains to explain what exactly Zuma has done to deserve such treatment. Not that there's no smoke. The whole country can by now name at least one instance where the name of the president has been mentioned in an unsavoury manner - think GuptaLeaks, Nkandlagate and state capture. The ANC however says through its SG, Zuma has done nothing wrong. It really just wants Cyril Ramaphosa to be the president now. It wants a change at the top. Just that, it wants us to believe.
A year before we go to the polls and decide which party should lead us during a new term, the ANC is acutely aware of the damage a Jacob Zuma clinging to power can do. If nothing else, the party understands on some level, even though it won't say it, that Zuma is a liability.
But while the ANC sticks to its story and line of not wanting to embarrass Jacob Zuma, doing things with dignity, the man at the centre of the storm seems at best uncooperative, digging in his heels. It seems however he's played his last hand and its time to admit defeat, lest he drags his entire organization to the brink of disaster.
Opposition parties have called on ordinary citizens to take to the streets if we get to the day of a no confidence vote. A reminder that - as much as we might think about politics as far removed from us; it really is all about us. And as we wait on tenterhooks for a Jacob Zuma to emerge from a couple of days of hiding, let's hope when he does, he shows us all a bit of love. It's after all the month of love. Let's hope he does the right thing. Your time is up Jacob Zuma.