After all, corruption is not something you can comfortably achieve on your own"

Those who believe that Schabir Shaik was done a politically inspired injustice when he was sentenced to jail for fraud and corruption should now admit that they were wrong.

The Constitutional Court yesterday ruled against Shaik’s application for permission to appeal against his conviction and sentence.

“An appeal against conviction and sentence does not bear any reasonable prospect of success,” the court said.

This should finally lay to rest the conspiracy theories that suggested that Shaik ­ and, by extension, Zuma ­ was the victim of an elaborate conspiracy to jail him.

Such theories would have to make very elaborate assumptions if they were to be sustained.

Surely, not even the most ardent of Shaik’s fans would suggest that Judge Hillary Squires and the entire bench of the Constitutional Court were mobilised in a Machiavellian conspiracy to blacken the name of a small-time businessman because of his connection with Zuma.

Shaik still has the option of petitioning the president. This is a course he should seriously consider, given President Thabo Mbeki’s unpredictability.

The man who prosecuted Shaik, Billy Downer, said after the court ruling: “This is the end of a long road ­ some seven years.”

The ruling might have implications for Zuma. After all, corruption is not something you can comfortably achieve on your own *1.

But is the National Prosecuting Authority ­ its head, Vusi Pikoli, purportedly suspended for failing to communicate properly with a minister ­ in a position to take a decision on Zuma’s prosecution?

The Constitutional Court’s judgment ought to restore much-need credibility to the justice system. Let’s hope that it marks the end of the unseemly and, it transpires, wholly unwarranted, political attacks on the courts.

Shaik did crime, now he must do time.

With acknowledgement to The Times.