The public controversy over arms will serve, at least, to focus attention on important principles that lie at the root of any well-run state.

The exercise will turn out to have been the value if, once through it, we succeed in deepening our hard-won democracy, and make it more stable and secure for the years to come. All democratic countries have to walk the tortuous path from the first flush of freedom to a durable form of more mature statehood.

In the United States it took years to establish the substance from the mere form of how that democracy would work. And some say it still doesn't.

In Britain, there never was a written constitution, and much of its history was muddling through - a mildly enlightened empiricism - though there have been belated moves to write things down.

In Europe, after the rise and fall of the 20th century dictators, new ways to ensure freedom had to be found, and chronicled and entrenched in great detail. The European Union is viewed by some as a nightmare of rules and good intentions.

In Africa, the immediate post-colonial social disruption and virtual disappearance of the state in many parts had to be addressed, and the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, since 1960, is a mirror image of what was happening over a much wider front on the continent. The new African Union is playing a major role in underpinning principles of good governance and ensuring an end to violence and bringing about greater stability in Africa. A new culture is emerging.

And so with South Africa. We emerged from the grip of racist repression less than 10 years ago. We are now grappling with the reality of reaching a broad national consensus on the way forward in deepening our democracy and ensuring freedoms won but more easily lost.

We must not ignore values and principles that all democracies hold dear - like the presumption of innocence unless or until proved guilty. We must not make it the norm that unproven suspicion becomes thundering guilt - for example, requiring people in high places to get out of office on that account.

Let us therefore attempt a random check-list, and see how we fare in the deepened democracy stakes. We can do this in the form of questions and answers.

Is there freedom in the media to disclose alleged wrong-doing even in high places? The answer is emphatically yes, even to the point of trying, convicting and metaphorically executing people in the absence of proper due process.

There is even what seems to be novel prosecutorial contribution to jurisprudence that a prima facie case is judged, in advance, to be probably not winnable. But let the legal fundis haggle over that.

Is there instinctive respect for the time-tested rules of contempt of court and those designed to ensure no comment or action that can prejudice or influence criminal or civil proceedings? The answer, her, is emphatically no. The media, in particular, show very little regard for these rules - even to the point of routinely saying precisely what happened (that is who was to blame and who not) in road accidents, as if a court did not, exclusively have the right and responsibility to decide this - important, in view of heavy insurance and other claims arising out of culpability.

Are the politicians free to raise virtually anything they like in and out of parliament? The answer is most decidedly yes, and they do, sometimes to reckless excess, and possibly fed by quarters that may not have South Africa's real best interests at heart.

Are, indeed, opposition politicians circumspect in raising things, particularly when their attacks are directed at people in high places who, in many other countries, are protected by shields against insult, injury to reputation or even prosecution while in office?

The answer is no - instead, there is a feeding frenzy of enmity directed at people in high places, a frenzy relying on far less than prima facie evidence.

There is very little respect for the principle of assumption of innocence. In fact, squadrons of tanks are driven through it daily.

Are government agencies themselves responsible for most disclosures of corruption wrong-doing by officials? The answer is yes, in the bulk of such cases.

Do the media play a role in such disclosure? The answer is yes, but a surprisingly small role , as originators. Their howling, sometimes sloppy, headlines are more often than not handed to them on a platter by government investigators with sincere intentions or hostile politicians with insincere ones.

In the past nine years the media have not been known for much independent, critical digging of their very own - nor for self-criticism or censure of their own colleagues (the dog doesn't eat dog principle of journalism).

The above suggests that we in South Africa have an open system, a remarkably open one. We bare our every blemish to the world, and we use our freedoms, even with abandon. And, yes, we can be proud of this. It certainly keeps the government on its toes. And no one will argue convincingly that the critical role of the media and monitoring bodies is of little value : it is central to any democracy.

But the particular way we go about our new found freedom suggests that we have much work to do on reaching a broad consensus on how our democracy is to be made to work and what norms, if any, should act as constraint when it comes to public disclosure about purely private or unproven issues.

Let us continue our debates, by all means. But let us seriously seek to find reasonable consensus as we prepare to enter our second decade of democracy.

Meanwhile, let us look at our once very strange but now very remarkable society, and say : we have done well in this decade but we can do better, much better. All of us.

Essop Pahad is the minister in the presidency.

With acknowledgements to Essop Pahad and the Sunday Independent.