Responding to the previous day's debate on the presidency budget in the National Assembly, he said an expectation was that members would "engage on the content" of his office's 2011/12 plans and allocations.
"Unfortunately, some members on the opposition benches reminded me of my favourite passage in Shakespeare’s Macbeth - their inputs were simply 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'," Zuma said, chuckling heartily.
Once the laughter from ANC benches had subsided, he then added by way of explanation that Macbeth - in Scene V of the play - had "engaged in a soliloquy" after hearing news of his wife's death.
His remarks provoked heckling from opposition MPs, who were perhaps lucky Zuma spared them a fuller quote from the same passage: "... It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."