It was the week in which it became clear that not even alliance leaders could stop the tsunami that has been unleashed around Jacob Zuma, the former deputy president.

It was also a week when a dramatic Scorpions raid symbolically showed what lay at the heart of the apparent lunacy of the demands of Cosatu members that corruption charges against Zuma be dropped. It showed that the alliance's left is revolting against a state it perceives to have outflanked it on everything it holds important.

Cosatu central committee members overruled with raw emotion a toned-down executive resolution that Zuma should be charged and have his day in court.

They did so with the same people's power that characterised the ordinary members' rebellion against both Zuma's axing and a number of policy proposals at the ANC's national policy conference recently. A senior alliance member remarked about the first revolt: "It killed the fear in the alliance".

There is no longer any doubt that the alliance and its relationship with President Thabo Mbeki's government is in serious crisis.

As the police and the Scorpions were facing off at Zuma's house in Johannesburg this week, Cosatu representatives were singing struggle songs about bringing back their machine guns. It was a microcosm of the rift opening up both in the alliance and in society at large. There was clearly a serious miscalculation, however, by both the workers and the national prosecuting authority (NPA).

In fairness, it is reliably understood that before Bulelani Ngcuka, the former head of the NPA, made the vexed "prima facie" comment about Zuma, he had stopped investigators from raiding Zuma's home to prove their case. And it is well-known that additional charges are now being investigated against Zuma.

But in the minds of alliance members it highlighted perceptions that they were at the receiving end of vicious technocrats. The raid on Zuma's house was perceived as a show of kragdadigheid and a justification for their new rebellion.

Many on the alliance's left - the youth, workers and communist party cadres - and on the right - such as Zulu nationalists - perceive that Mbeki's cabinet has become a power unto itself, capable of intervening in the rule of law. Examples of contradictions that have been mentioned in the past few days include Oilgate, Mark Thatcher and Dr Wouter Basson, the chemical war expert, who have managed to sidestep the law's clutches.

In the case of Zuma, it is perceived that the machinery of state is being employed against the alliance and its popular choice.

Analysts believe the genesis of the rift lies in the early 1990s with the decision to implement the capital friendly Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy.

This outflanked democratic structures such as parliament, the alliance and the bargaining council, Nedlac, in economic policy decisions. It, in turn, commanded the powerful streamlined technocratic executive that Mbeki has built with aplomb.

Mbeki axed Zuma on June 14, nine years to the day after he announced Gear. Both the Left and populist Right in the alliance have turned Zuma into a mythical saviour - by default or calculation - precisely because they believe Mbeki's top-down, centralised, technocratic state has been bypassing them in decision-making and, more importantly, is unleashing its state apparatus selectively against their own.

Few senior alliance leaders truly believe that Zuma will bring a return to democratic participatory government. No one, in fact, doubts that he is largely a rallying point for opposition to Mbeki and his centralised policy-making machine. Some even suggest that Zuma had played it all the way with promises of patronage and power, leaving the would-be recipients dangling.

Others warn that it was precisely the issue of succeeding a president with so much power centralised in his hands that was at the heart of the rifts - that the debate over succession itself could be threatening democracy, coupled with big business's role in king-making.

Cosatu members demanded Zuma's reinstatement this week, realising they had painted themselves into a corner by earlier insisting that he must have his day in court. Although their actions, with subtle threats of violence, appeared insane and undemocratic, they seemed to believe their backs were against the wall and that they had no choice but to throw down the gauntlet to Mbeki.

No one is talking about a split yet, although the alliance is clearly in deep turmoil. Although the ball appears to be in Mbeki's court, few expect him to act openly. There is even talk within the alliance about asking for mediation from Nelson Mandela, despite doubts that Mbeki would allow such an affront to his competence.

But the ANC leadership can no longer protest that there are only a few malcontents and ultra-leftists in its midst.

A sincere and mature debate by all over the nature of South Africa's democratic transition and the state it is building is now crucial.

With acknowledgements to Christelle Terreblanche and The Sunday Independent.