"I did it. I voted against him." I thought the senior ANC MP was joking until he moved out of the shadow and I could see the grave look on his face. I bumped into him outside parliament on Tuesday night after the motion of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma had been defeated by 21 votes in a historic secret ballot.
The street outside parliament was teeming with ANC supporters waiting for Zuma to address them.
The MP was going the other way.
He is a member of the ANC national executive committee but did not want to be among the collection of ignobles on the stage singing the president's praises.
I had asked teasingly if he had put his cross in the right box and though he is a straight talker, I was surprised by his response.
"I can't take what he is doing," he said. "I had to do it."
I realised then what it must have taken for some of the ANC's most senior leaders to consciously flout the party's firm directive to reject the motion.
There were a few dissidents who made it clear they would be guided by their consciences. But the tally in support of the motion was much higher than expected, which meant up to 40 ANC MPs could have supported it.
When the ANC caucus ended on Tuesday morning, it was difficult to gauge whether the party's leaders had done enough to suppress the brewing dissent.
With contradictory messages coming from the SACP, it was also unclear whether those who had called for the president to step down would vote for or against him.
Lists were distributed of people who were supposedly ready to break rank, but several people denied these were authentic.
During the debate, the president's ardent supporters howled at and heckled the opposition while others looked prickly and guarded. Most were inscrutable as they stepped forward to cast their ballots.
The truth was that nobody was quite certain how anybody else would be voting. Even with the anonymity of the secret ballot, a few ANC MPs were still vacillating about whether abstaining was preferable to voting with the opposition.
Some surprised themselves by taking the plunge when the moment came.
Because there was a deliberate effort to frame the vote as being about the ANC and not Zuma, the "yes" vote was hard to contend with. It is a similar process to what happens to people who grew up in the ANC but were forced to consider other choices on the ballot paper in recent elections because of the disappointment and betrayal they feel.
WATCH how President Zuma survived the most recent motion of no-confidence
It is emotionally draining. Sentimentality about the ANC of old persists, even when the leadership has sullied the organisation beyond recognition.
This is why both the ANC and opposition parties need to reflect seriously on the outcome of Tuesday's vote as they map the way forward.
What would have happened if Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had arrived at parliament on Tuesday, as it was rumoured she might do, and appealed to the ANC caucus to vote against Zuma?
Many people defer to her because of her unique place in history and her strength of character.
What would have been the outcome if an ANC MP had stood up and tabled a second motion of no confidence against the president, as some considered doing to invalidate concerns about collusion with the opposition?
Would Zuma still be president now, considering that the margin between the yes and no ballots, including abstentions, was 12 votes?
The ANC is clearly in uncharted waters when it comes to Zuma.
The fact that so many MPs voted against him shows they do not buy the argument that the ANC can deal with this crisis internally.
There are doubts whether Zuma will be easier to manage when he is no longer the ANC leader after the December elective conference, and whether allowing South Africa's crisis to spiral on until then is the right approach.
The ANC is clearly in uncharted waters when it comes to Zuma
ANC treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize observed how big a political moment the vote was. "What unfolded in parliament would have been dismissed a few years ago as unthinkable and inconceivable or, worse still, not just unlikely and unimaginable but definitely impossible," he said.
Tuesday's outcome has opened the opportunity for co-operation across the floor in the national interest - something that has not been present in our politics since the early years of democracy.
The decision by some MPs to put the country before the ANC reflects a political maturity that South Africa desperately needs to navigate the political and economic crisis, and to confront the menace of state capture.
That is why the DA's silly gimmick to try to dissolve parliament is poorly considered and could force a retreat by ANC MPs.
As the ANC MP walked away on Tuesday night, I had a flashback to him in his military fatigues - the real MK uniform, not Carl Niehaus's Halloween costume - ready to die for his organisation.
The ANC keeps hurting its own and, after this week, voting against it might become less and less difficult for its MPs.
