Tap, tap, anyone listening?

Do you find you’ve been more careful lately about what you say on the phone?

You never know which of Jacob Zuma’s new friends might be listening. We shouldn’t have been surprised to find conversations between Leonard McCarthy and Bulelani Ngcuka were recorded.

Such practices were common under the spooky Nats, who taught our new masters a few tricks.

The awesome scope of phone-tapping potential became known more than a decade ago when Prince Charles’s lavatorial lustings were broadcast around the world.

Surely you remember. Even then we were told there was technology available to intercept any phone conversation anywhere.

So, although McCarthy and Ngcuka had the authority of spymasters, they were amateurish, stupid, arrogant or all of the above to talk openly about their plans to nail Zuma.

Can they really have been so naive as to believe no one was listening?

Because of all the secrecy and legal bluster it’s difficult to know whether those who made the recordings were acting within the law.

But it seems obvious the tapes were illegally obtained by Zuma’s lawyer Michael Hulley.

He had no right to possess them, or to allow others access to them, even if the “others” happened to include Willie Hofmeyr, the wily National Prosecuting Authority deputy director who has worked out which side of his bread is buttered.

There are laws governing who may listen to others’ conversations, and under what circumstances. It is not a free-for-all. Just as Constitutional Court judges are not “gods” as Zuma paints them, so too there are no deities among the NPA or indeed the National Intelligence Agency.

They can’t do as they please. In order for an interception to be legal it must be approved by a judge, unless someone’s life is in danger or there is an urgent need to carry out a rescue. Applications and approvals must be in writing.

So, who’s the judge, and where’s the application for tapping Bully Lahnee’s phone? No one gives a toss as long as they can sing about machine guns and pretend life will improve under JZ.

Thank heavens the DA has laid theft charges against Hulley for having those tapes.

But with the NPA and the law bending before Zuma, don’t expect the truth to be on tap.