The offence itself was bad enough - an orgy of overspending by obsequious officials and conniving contractors who managed to spend 246m rand ($21.7m, £14.3m) of public money lavishly upgrading South African President Jacob's Zuma's private homestead, Nkandla.
That is nearly 10 times what taxpayers spent on Nelson Mandela's two homes, and 20 times what it cost to secure Thabo Mbeki's house.
As we now know, Mr Zuma's "essential security upgrades" included a swimming pool, an amphitheatre, a chicken run and a visitors' centre. A fairly humble collection of traditional buildings on a rural hillside has been transformed into something more like a luxury holiday resort.
But as is so often the case in politics, it is the cover up - long, venomous, hair-splitting and sanctimonious - that has been most revealing, and most depressing.
Some of Mr Zuma's closest advisers - those with an eye on image and votes, rather than on real or imaginary security concerns - were urging him from the very beginning to apologise for any errors and to volunteer immediately to pay for any unwarranted expenditure.
The scandal could have ended in a week, and the president could even have emerged with his status enhanced.
Instead Mr Zuma and his supporters have sought to undermine the credibility of South Africa's public protector - whose exhaustively forensic report recommended that he repay some of the money - and have ridiculed the opposition for seeking to turn Nkandla into a presidency-defining scandal about accountability and corruption.
Now the police minister - a man whose career is, of course, entirely dependent on Mr Zuma's goodwill - has produced his own report, which spells out, in inadvertently comic detail, how conveniently the mosaic-inlayed swimming pool can double as an essential source of water for fighting fires.
The minister's unsurprising conclusion - Mr Zuma should not pay back a penny.
Comic moment
President Zuma did not hide his sense of vindication.
In parliament this week he openly mocked the opposition's attempts to pronounce the word "Nkandla" in a not-so-subtle hint that it was white politicians who were driving the criticism.
It was a confident, boisterous, divisive, and - at least for his supporters - genuinely comic moment.
And there is no doubt that Mr Zuma's jibes will have gone down well with his base.
- BBC
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