I was once bitten by a scorpion. It's an extremely unpleasant experience. One morning out at Misty Cliffs, I pulled on a pair of jeans that had been lying on the floor.

The next moment, there was a searing pain in my bum, I ripped the jeans off, and out dropped this evil-looking little black bugger of a scorpion. With tears of pain streaming down my face, I remembered my training and carefully killed the scorpion for later identification, and then telephoned the poison unit at Tygerberg Hospital.

They told me to stay calm and said they would alert False Bay Hospital that I was on my way. By now I was starting to hallucinate and staggered down to my car, scorpion in a Tupperware, and drove off to Fish Hoek, normally a 10 minute drive.

But along the way, I somehow decided to take the scenic route, stopped off at the local café, then got lost and arrived at casualty an hour later with the hospital staff on the verge of sending out a search party.

So I can sympathise with Deputy President Jacob Zuma in his current battle with the Scorpions. They really are nasty little buggers with a very painful sting, and their bites do tend to lead one into hallucinations and elaborate delaying tactics.

But I find the whole affair increasingly puzzling. There have been pages and pages of analysis written about the affair, speculating about power struggles within the presidency, power struggles within the ANC, power struggles and turf battles between the Scorpions and the SAPS and so on.

I even read a suggestion the other day that the entire thing was a deep political plot by the national director of public prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka, to get Zuma out of the deputy presidency to pave the way into the post for his wife, Minerals and Energy minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Whoa. Now that is really Machiavellian.

We've had ANC general secretary Kgalema Motlanthe accusing the Scorpions of acting like something out of "Hollywood". We've had Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi's out-of-the-blue announcement that the Scorpions were "under review" . And then we've had the Justice Ministry, under whom the Scorpions fall, saying their future was secure.

This is getting a bit Hollywood after all. Weren't we all raised on cop movies in which the guys in uniform bumble along, and then the guys in suits from the FBI come along, tread on everyone's toes, and either solve the crime in spectacular fashion - or fail dismally while the uniformed plodders pull it off.

Turf battles are nothing new in the cops. But the political dimensions here are new. Personally, I cannot quite fathom what's going on. I have had extensive dealings with the Scorpions as a journalist, and have always found them to be an impeccably professional unit.

Sure, they get huge headlines, but that is the nature of the game - they work in a high-profile world and they pull off high-profile busts.

In the Zuma case, though, there appear to be levels within levels of the Machiavellian process. It was, after all, the prince of the dark art of politics, Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote that "it is the nature of men to be bound by the benefits they confer as much as by those they receive".

Not that I'm suggesting that our deputy president has either conferred or received benefits of any kind, but the Scorpions certainly seem to think that the possibility that this might have happened is worth investigating. An excellent article on page three of yesterday's Business Day lists a string of allegations that have already been made regarding the arms deal and Zuma, and concludes that "the question is not whether the Scorpions can bring charges, but how they could possibly avoid bringing charges based on these facts. The case is not circumstantial. It is not based on hearsay".

We are wading in murky waters, and while Zuma has accused the Scorpions of leaking a list of 35-odd questions to the Sunday Times, there are many who believe the leak comes from either Zuma or Thabo Mbeki's office to further a deeper agenda. Like me when I was bitten by the scorpion, has Jacob Zuma decided to take the scenic route, or is that just me hallucinating in the aftermath of the sting?

With acknowledgements to Tony Weaver and the Cape Times.