You could assume that President Jacob Zuma is very comfortable in his space right now. He is not the disaster president many predicted before 2009 but he's not that great either.
There are still grave misgivings about his leadership qualities but there is an acceptance that he is what we have and that the majority of ANC members (who are the majority in society) have endorsed him as their choice. They overwhelmingly returned him ahead of his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, at the party's elective conference last year.
So why am I repeating the obvious? The contradiction is that for a president who is in charge he is displaying an awful lot of the type of behaviour of a leader still crying out for a little love and affection.
He should be steaming ahead with the implementation of his government's programmes so that his critics are left eating humble pie. Of course, implementation lies with the ministers but, at that level, one senses a hesitancy, a lack of confidence, and it seems there's an atmosphere that suggests the ministers are still searching for solutions rather than implementing them.
The health minister is looking for red herrings – he is fighting alcohol advertising while many public hospitals are still in a shockingly unhygienic condition and lack basic equipment and medication. The minister of higher education, likewise, was nowhere to be seen for six weeks while a major university in the rural Eastern Cape was at a standstill.
Hamstrung
Many other departments are still trying to adjust to the new political leadership that came in after the latest Cabinet reshuffle. Some, such as finance, are hamstrung by factors outside their control – such as labour unrest and political uncertainty.
South Africa is nowhere near being a failed state but its government certainly falls short of inspiring confidence. Is it a government in charge, with a vision and a plan? Or is it just grinding on mechanically and laboriously?
Back to my point, then: Why is Zuma spending so much time trying to buy media goodwill and imploring us to inspire hope and unity?
There is nothing wrong with this plea, in my view. As a leader, he is expected to push for national consensus and shared values. But he is doing more than that. After having breakfast with senior journalists, when he made the appeal for positive coverage, he went on to speak to young journalism students and said he felt like fleeing the country when he read the negative headlines.
Other ill-informed comments made by him on that occasion included this statement: "I have argued with them [the media] that they were never elected. We were elected and we can claim that we represent the people. They do say they represent the people.
"Do the population or public determine what is reported? They don't. They are spoon-fed, they just listen to what the media says. Who determines reporting: Is it the media itself, is it the owners? … Media is a business, it's not what it says [– that it's] a watchdog. It's a business. They are doing business."
Poor performance
The president sounds genuinely aggrieved. But his comments assume that the consumers of media are passive and are force-fed what they read, listen to or watch. Consumers are in fact active decision-makers, and that is why, for example, so few of them choose to buy The New Age. The poor performance of that publication shows that you cannot choose the right ("positive") kind of news for the readers. That the media are business entities geared for different markets should not be breaking news in 2013.
My real interest, however, is in why the president, so safely ensconced in his position, is still so concerned about negative media coverage. Is it because we media people are not "nation builders"? Is it because he still feels we have not accorded him sufficient respect – when, internationally, no less a leader than Russian President Vladimir Putin refers to him as his "point man" in Africa? Or is it that he feels that the majority of the media is anti-ANC and that continued negative coverage could affect the party next year in a crucial election, one in which it is expected to shed voters?
In truth, maybe Zuma is right to be concerned. He has two great hurdles to clear before the elections: the public protector's findings on his Nkandla family complex, which has cost the fiscus nearly R280-million, and the Democratic Alliance's dogged efforts to prove that there was no rational basis for the withdrawal of the more than 750 fraud and corruption charges Zuma faced in 2009 before that year's elections. These are not minor matters.
Salivating
As far as the public protector goes, Zuma's allies in Parliament are salivating at the prospect of challenging Thuli Madonsela on her report on the Independent Electoral Commission head Pansy Tlakula's alleged conflict of interest. This week, Parliament set up a committee to discuss her report.
Initial indications are that the endgame being played by Zuma-supporting MPs is probably that, by the time Madonsela releases her findings on Nkandla, she will be so "discredited" no one will believe her.
But a court ruling on the spy tapes, if it goes in favour of the DA, will not be so easy to discredit. Can the ANC afford that?
A little bird whispers to me that it is conceivable that the ANC, looking at what their own internally commissioned research tells them about their election prospects for next year, might be alarmed enough to consider calling a national general council of the party before the elections to introspect and strategise. And that could have major consequences for the people at the top of the party.