This week, Patricia de Lille resigned as executive mayor of Cape Town - and as a member of the DA.
It should have drawn the curtain on one of the official opposition’s most tawdry episodes, but nothing is ever that simple in South African politics.
No sooner had De Lille kept to her original promise to the party grandees to resign on her own terms, than she issued an appeal to have the controversial reports which led the party to abortively try to fire her reviewed and set aside.
The DA’s inability to effectively and resolutely handle De Lille over the last 18 months has exposed deep racial divisions in the party and sown seeds of real doubt in the minds of both its supporters and dispassionate observers over its ability to govern and, most importantly, its adherence to its core values which have always been ostensibly the antithesis of all the wrongs they have accused the ANC of committing.
Ironically at a time when the ruling party has been handing them (and the Economic Freedom Fighters) one priceless electoral gift after another - from the train-crash tenure of Jacob Zuma to the disastrous debacle of grant payments under Bathabile Dlamini and the perpetual lying of Malusi Gigaba - they have been unable to capitalise on any of these.
Instead, they have been seen as vengeful, spiteful and, actually, racist in their treatment of De Lille.
Whether this is justified or not is rendered almost irrelevant as the all-important general elections approach in under a year, where perception often counts as much, if not more, as principle in the minds of the voters.
Just how much damage the last 18 months in particular have wrought on a party that once appeared to have an unassailable momentum will soon become very clear.