The Hefer Commission is seriously considering placing former Sunday Times journalist Ranjeni Munusamy in witness protection.

Munusamy believes she is the victim of a dirty tricks campaign, after finding a deadly scorpion in her Johannesburg flat yesterday.

The previous day, Munusamy answered her doorbell to find a policeman who said he was investigating her assassination.

"I don't know if someone is trying to play with my mind," Munusamy told Independent Newspapers last night.

She said she stumbled on the live scorpion on her kitchen table in her Illovo flat yesterday morning, and "after recovering from the shock", contained the scorpion in a glass bottle.

"I managed to get it in a mayonnaise bottle and then called my lawyers," she said. They then sent the scorpion to a laboratory, where it was identified as poisonous.

On Monday, Munusamy was watching the commission's proceedings on television when her doorbell rang. She opened the door to find that "police received a report that I had been assassinated".

Commission secretary John Bacon said he was "trying to establish what is going on".

"We are considering whether to put her in a witness protection programme," he said.

"It appears from a letter from her lawyers that the police were called out to an armed robbery but the policeman at her door said they were investigating an assassination - it's all a bit strange."

Bacon said he was trying to verify the facts and obtain a report from the police, before taking further action.

In another development, Jacob Zuma has defiantly refused to testify before the commission.

Independent Newspapers understands that Judge Joos Hefer wrote to the deputy president earlier this week, threatening to subpoena him if he refused to appear before the commission.

But Zuma insisted he would not comply and in turn threatened to defy the subpoena on the basis that he did not have any information to assist the commission's probe into allegations that Scorpions boss Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid-era spy.

Bacon confirmed that the commission had "sent a letter and received correspondence back from the deputy president" in the past two days.

"The judge is going to make an announcement on whether the deputy president will testify or not when the commission resumes in the morning," Bacon said.

Zuma's office referred questions on the matter to the ANC. "It's the ANC's business. Please speak to the party," said Zuma's spokesperson, Lakela Kaunda. ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said he was "not aware of any announcement". He repeated the ANC position that Zuma should not testify.

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Michaels and The Star.