And the Utterly Clueless Award goes to..

If, as the saying goes, a week is a long time in politics, then 2008 was an exceptionally long year politically. It was indeed South Africa's most momentous year since 1990, when the ANC and the other liberation movements were unbanned and since 1994 when South Africa agreed to its negotiated democratic revolution.

THE BIGGEST WINNER
This still has to be ANC president Jacob Zuma. He entered the year fresh from his election victory in Polokwane and was the heir apparent to the presidency of the country. Not bad for a man whose political career was in tatters a few years earlier when he was fired as deputy president because of his allegedly corrupt connections to convicted fraudster Schabir Sheik.

While he still has not had the moment in court he claimed so long ago to want, he also had a major court victory when Judge Chris Nicholson declared the way in which the National Prosecuting Authority had charged him to have been illegal. Nicholson also, by the way, gave a Zuma-led ANC the ammunition it needed to dismiss President Thabo Mbeki, the man who had dismissed him.

Inspired by his victories, Zuma is suing cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro for R7-million for a cartoon drawn by Shapiro, who uses the pen name Zapiro, in which Zuma is shown unbuckling his belt as he prepares to rape Lady Justice. The cartoon appeared in the Sunday Times in September and has been widely distributed since.

THE BIGGEST CHANCER
Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe takes this prize hands down. Who else has been able to lose a parliamentary election, poll fewer votes in a presidential election and still occupy the seat of power?

Who else would be able to say to the world that the collapsed healthcare system of his country, and resultant cholera epidemic, was a Western imperial plot designed to engineer him out of power and get away with it?

The post-election power-sharing deal with the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai has counted for nothing and Mugabe still continues to wield the iron fist of political violence which has kept him in power for so long. And this with impunity.

THE MOST HOPEFUL
This has to go to the Congress of the People party, launched in Bloemfontein on December 16. Cope was initially known as Shikota named after its breakaway leaders Mosiuoa Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa, who now are the party's president and deputy president respectively. They, of course, resigned from the ruling party in the wake of Mbeki's dismissal in what was a complete surprise.

The pundits had always thought that if the ANC split, it would be the left wing comprising the SA Communist Party and Cosatu that would split and go it alone. Instead it was the centre right of the party that walked away.

They are talking up a storm and predicting large electoral gains from the ANC in next year's election in May. Certainly the most hopeful.

THE MOST USEFUL IDIOT (and perhaps the most dangerous)
There would be few challengers to ANC Youth League president Julius Malema in this category. While Young Communist League leader Buti Manamela was almost as idiotic, Malema gets the prize. Cast your mind back to him saying the league would lay down their lives for Zuma, indeed they would "kill for Zuma". When challenged on this, and reported to the Human Rights Commission for hate speech, Malema insisted he'd been quoted out of context. What? I rest my case. The rider of perhaps the most dangerous is because Malema's rhetoric raises the spectre of political violence in a very real way. When tensions increase on the run into the elections, this could be a serious problem.

POLITICAL HARLOTS OF THE YEAR
Three entities share this title. The first is the ANC parliamentary caucus. Almost all of them secretly knew that to get rid of the Scorpions was a serious mistake that would harm the pathetically limited ability of the country to fight crime. Yet they submissively went along with the decision to scrap the Scorpions in the interests of protecting Zuma and other senior members of the ANC from further investigation and prosecution.

This was a spineless display by a group intent on retaining their jobs rather than giving substance to their constitutional mandate to legislate in the interests of all South Africans.

The other two are political has-been Peter Marais and Independent Democrats main guy Simon Grindrod, who have lost no time in jumping ship to Cope.

THE MOST IRONIC (unconsciously so)
Zuma carries off his second award with a runaway victory. His recent speech in Namibia about the dangers of corruption and the harm it poses to the democratic order was nothing short of astonishing. That a man who was facing multiple charges of fraud, corruption, money laundering and tax evasion, much of it connected to the arms deal, could say these things with a straight face is amazing and deeply ironic.

THE WORST AFRICAN LEADERS
There are, sadly, many candidates for this prize but three in particular should share the award: Robert Mugabe, Thabo Mbeki and Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila are all right up there. Mugabe for developing the art of refusing to leave even after losing an election to its highest level yet. Also, few could match his extraordinary ability to destroy a country in 10 short years.

Mbeki is there for aiding and abetting Mugabe's coup d'etat in Zim and for failing to ensure that he and those other spineless SADC leaders brought real pressure to bear on him.

Kabila was given a chance to do it differently in the DRC. Many countries, not least South Africa, poured resources into his election and as a reward find that Kabila has been using violence against his political enemies. Thanks guys, for cementing the negativity of Afro-pessimists around the world.

THE SOREST LOSER
This has to be the ANC itself. Every time something did not go its way, it resorted to revolutionary rhetoric extremely damaging to our constitutional democracy. If this did not work, off they went to court, like their challenge to Shikota using the name Congress of the People. And then when three judges, two black and one white, ruled against them, the black judges were described as relics of the apartheid past. Shame on you.

THE MOST POMPOUS
This surely is the world of Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni. His ruling that news photographers would no longer be allowed to take his picture and that newspapers could only use officially sanctioned pictures of his eminence takes the prize.

THE MOST VALUABLE
Only one person in the country appears to have to the ability of knocking billions of rands off the value of the stock exchange by appearing to resign and that is Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. Long may he continue to serve the country with his unquestioned loyalty, but it is a huge ask. Imagine the pressure of living with the reality that if you leave your job the currency and the economy collapses?

THE BEST MAKEOVER
At the beginning of this month the DA won two municipal wards in ANC strongholds in the city of Cape Town, this from a party many assumed would also be damaged by Cope. It is undoubtedly due to the way DA leader Helen Zille, voted world's best mayor earlier this year, has taken the DA to the forefront of drug and gangster issues on the Cape Flats. And also, in no small part, to her remake of the city by undoing the worst excesses of the former ANC administration of the city. In the only major area where the DA governs, Zille has made a real difference.

THE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT
This one goes to ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe. When he headed the National Union of Mineworkers he appeared rational and thoughtful. We all knew he was from the far left. But since taking the top organisational job at the ANC he has disappointed. Remember that when a court process was not to his liking, the judges of the Constitutional Court were labelled "counter- revolutionary".

Or, when trying to justify the demise of the Scorpions, he said many of the agents were "apartheid" operators with a political agenda to bring down the ANC. Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions Willie Hofmeyr told Parliament there were only nine and they had served the new order with courage and loyalty. Need I say more?

THE BIGGEST LOSER
This had to be Mbeki. He entered the year having been given a bloody nose at Polokwane. The man he had tried so hard to destroy politically, Jacob Zuma, had triumphed and in time would take over his state mansion and his executive jet. Then, of course, after the Nicholson judgment he was called on to resign and was not even allowed to use his toys to the end of his term.

He has also watched as his legacy has been steadily eroded by his ongoing support for Mugabe and his attempt to protect corruption-accused national police commissioner Jackie Selebi by suspending National Prosecuting Authority boss Pikoli last year.

Much of his cabinet stepped down after his resignation and several provincial leaders, among them Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela, bit the dust.

THE SECOND BIGGEST LOSER
This goes to the man who will be president for only a few short months, Kgalema Motlanthe, who has been criticised for sacking Pikoli this month, besides being a very bad tenant.

While vindicated by the Ginwala Commission, which had been set up to examine his ability to do the job, Pikoli was supposedly found lacking in terms of his "sensitivity to matters of national security".

Motlanthe also got some bad press earlier this month when the owner of a R6-million Johannesburg mansion, which had been damaged to the tune of R500,000 while occupied by the President, said he would sue for the damage.

From being the top African statesman attending the UN and the G8, he is the failed facilitator in the Zimbabwe negotiations.

In the end, however, given that all of these awards are made in the context of the global economic crisis, for which the US gets the top global disappointment of the year award, I guess that the real losers are the people of South Africa and Zimbabwe.