SO, President Jacob Zuma’s republic appears to have slipped on another banana skin. SA has become the third-biggest economy in Africa, having lost first place to Nigeria a year or so back, and now second spot to Egypt, as our currency continues to wobble south.

I know the size of an economy measured by gross domestic product (GDP) is an unfashionable thing, but in our case, GDP may be the best we have. Measured by contentment or happiness, as some of the preferred alternatives would have the world do, we would probably rank even lower.

I am both scared of Zuma and sorry for him. I’m sorry for him because he is such a poor judge of character. The Gupta family is a case in point. Instead of enriching him in quiet and subtle ways, the Guptas, obsequious in the extreme to his face, naturally, have also turned out to be unbelievably loud and vulgar when he isn’t around.

From landing wedding guests at an air force base, to shipping cash out of the country in boxes and suitcases, to buying a gaudy R450m mansion in Dubai (gosh, I can recall at least a million times I have heard Gupta spokesmen say the family has invested every penny it has made in SA back into its businesses here), they are simply incapable of not wildly enjoying their money. It is absolutely the last thing Zuma needs and it will all end in tears, if it hasn’t already.

I’m scared of Zuma because he is just so negligent, bored and self-serving. He clearly doesn’t pay any attention to detail and it is always detail that gets him into trouble.

Nkandla is an example. All he ever had to do was go home, look around, and ask how much it was all costing.

And then he seems to read out whatever his officials put in front of him. You may not remember in his reply to this year’s state of the nation address, on February 18 — swinging through a forest of forgettable promises of efficiency — was this beauty: “School building designs have been standardised nationally and costed. We will no longer be building schools at costs above R30m.”

But, of course, we will. The president forgot to ask his officials about inflation. He doesn’t pay attention.

Then there was this: “The central supplier database will be compulsory from April 1 … The use of the tender portal will be compulsory from April 1 this year by all departments … Government tenders will thus no longer be advertised in newspapers…”

If you’re in my business, that is quite something. If you’re the businessman-turned-publisher Iqbal Survé, it is even a bigger something. We know this because in an extraordinary disclosure in Parliament the other day, the head of the Public Investment Corporation (the PIC, the R1-trillion-plus state pension fund manager) disclosed it has lent Survé, one way or another, almost R900m to buy the Independent newspaper group from Tony O’Reilly.

Dan Matjila, the CEO of the PIC, prodded either by the opposition or the Treasury (I believe the latter), further revealed the R888m, to be exact, was given to Survé interest-free for five years. I’m glad the state doesn’t run my pension. I need it. Perhaps public servants don’t. They’re remarkably quiet about what is essentially a political abuse.

Anyway, Matjila and his officials explained that the R888m (my bet, knowing the state of my industry, is that Dr Dan will never see his money) was a strategic gamble to create, in black hands, the equivalent of Naspers. The world and business and technology may have moved on, but the African National Congress (ANC) remains fatally attracted to copying Afrikaner empowerment more than 60 years after it happened.

Furthermore, reported Business Day’s Carol Paton on Wednesday: “A key assumption at the time (of the PIC investment) was (that) the company would be able to leverage the government’s adspend to greater effect than other media houses because it was black-owned.”

I don’t really know what any of that means, but it’s clear that even being black and being an ANC supporter doesn’t get you out of jail in print these days. According to the PIC presentation to Parliament, Paton wrote: “This increased adspend by the government hasn’t materialised yet, but we believe that the new procurement process of government will allow for a more favourable allocation.”

Good luck with that. New procurement processes or not, you have to wonder what part of “government tenders will thus no longer be advertised in newspapers” Dr Dan and his team don’t understand. Of course, this is Jacob Zuma we’re talking about. It’s impossible to know which fork of the tongue he was using when he said it. But if Dr Dan or Survé ever thought the Zuma administration was joined up, they now know better.

• Bruce is editor in chief