I am trying to take Jovial Rantao ("The day Mac Maharaj made history", Opinion and Analysis, The Star, August 8) seriously. He is the deputy editor of The Star. One expects an editor to be true to the facts.

I hope Jovial has a recording of my telephone discussion with him on Thursday evening.

I have such a tape recording. Mine recounts the discussion rather differently from what he has written.

Firstly, Jovial started out by informing me, without any prompting from me, that he had information from a person in the Scorpions about the impending charge against my wife.

Asked to identify this person, he said: "Let's say it is a source I have no reason to doubt." Asked when he received this information, he said: "Let's say within the last seven days." At my insistence he agreed to state "on the record" that his source was "inside the Scorpions".

In his article he keeps on about protecting a "source" and how journalists have died in apartheid South Africa while upholding this absolute duty, and how I gave him a "grilling". If this part of the conversation that took a few minutes over the phone was a grilling, I wonder how he would have endured the grilling and torture we experienced under apartheid!

Jovial has not sought to understand what I was saying. He describes what I said as "noises about nothing". He makes assumptions about my motives for what I said in the press release (a politician creating a smokescreen) and then describes my position as simply a demand that a journalist disclose the identity of his source. Nowhere in his column does he disclose that his source is inside the Scorpions.

I then telephoned Bulelani Ngcuka, the national director under whom the Scorpions fall. Ngcuka told me that the story was not true and requested me to get Jovial to phone him for direct confirmation of this.

I phoned Jovial back and asked him to go on record that his source was within the Scorpions. After much humming and hawing, he once more confirmed this. It is on the tape. I then dictated a statement - a short one, off the cuff. I asked him to check the falseness of his "source's" story by contacting Ngcuka. I gave him the cellphone number of Ngcuka.

Later I phoned him to find out whether he had contacted Ngcuka. He told me that the story was on hold and that he had not phoned Ngcuka because "he had no reason not to believe me". I told him I was releasing a press statement.

Let us now get to the real issue: Here is a source in the Scorpions who was spreading an untrue story. If Jovial had checked with Ngcuka, he would have had confirmation. He would then know that his "source" was undermining the Scorpions, breaking the law that set up the Scorpions, and using his anonymity to accuse my wife without giving her the simple recourse to face her accuser. That is the central concern I raise.

Rantao, who laudably asks the public to rely on the credibility of the Scorpions and plies the line that any criticism of the Scorpions should be seen as undermining a pillar of democracy, is actually shielding a criminal inside the Scorpions.

All the more interesting, is it not, that in his column Jovial says: "I had, and still have, no reason to doubt the veracity of the information I received ..."? He had a direct line to Ngcuka to test the veracity, but would not do so! Why?

At this stage all I can speak of is a specific instance and a specific person within the Scorpions. Is there a larger problem in the Scorpions? I cannot say at this point, but there are too many pointers not to raise concern.

Is the duty of a journalist to protect a "source" so absolute that Jovial does not see that he is allowing the criminal in the Scorpions to subvert democracy and allowing a cancer to take hold and spread? Faith is wonderful; blind faith is dangerous.

I believe the public should debate such questions. Do rights and freedoms have boundaries? With freedoms come responsibilities; with rights come duties. It is in the balancing and reconciling of these that boundaries arise. And if we acknowledge the need for boundaries, then we can debate when and what boundaries.

It is in this context that I pose the freedom and rights of Rantao, the journalist, and the responsibilities and duties of Rantao, the citizen.

We must defend press freedom. We helped make it. But let us not make it a mantra to recite in a trance, rather than a right that helps build and entrench our democracy.

In your columns, Jovial, at least ensure that the public knows not only your views but also what is being debated and what the other side is saying. Don't betray the public trust your column allows you.

With acknowledgements to Mac Maharaj and The Star.