Last Friday another of those milestones that makes this country the envy of the world was achieved when the financial services charter was unveiled.

Having learnt all the lessons from the fiasco of the leaked mining charter and its impact on the economy, a new direction was taken - the government would essentially move out of the arena of cajoling sectors towards empowerment and transformation.

The new way was to get each sector to accept the principle of empowerment and transformation and, among themselves, decide what would work.

The result is that we now have a financial services charter that commits the industry to:

25% black ownership by 2010, with 10% of that direct black ownership;

Provision of effective access to banking, insurance and savings services to people of lower income who have to date been redlined by major banks and insurance houses;

25% black representation at executive level of employment by 2008, 33% at board level, between 20% and 25% at senior level, and 30% at middle management level;

50% of procurement spend duly accredited with black companies by 2008, with the figure growing to 70% by 2014;

66% of empowerment financing - which could be over R75-billion - spent on low-income housing, agriculture, small and medium enterprises and "transformational infrastructure"; and

0.5% of each year's after-tax operating profits spent on corporate social responsibility aimed at black groups.

When Finance Minister Trevor Manuel sat with industry's representatives at the announcement of this breakthrough, what was not mentioned was the inevitable fights that went on behind closed doors until agreement had been reached.

It was a glorious moment, with powerful institutions that have been seen to be bloodsuckers with no conscience committing themselves to a change that, it is hoped, will normalise our society.

At the merger, just over two weeks ago at Sun City, of African, Afrikaner and "English" business bodies to form two umbrella organisations, President Thabo Mbeki said that nowhere in the world had anything like that ever happened before.

But neither of these events, marking important turning points in our society's economic transformation, made the kind of headlines they should have done - because, in typical South African manner, we are turning the spotlight from the good to the bad. I refer to the never-ending spy allegations saga that continues to make headlines in ways that are difficult to fathom.

People who find themselves on the wrong side of a number of related and unrelated investigations seem to have come together to make allegations against National Director of Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.

It was very easy in the beginning. An intelligence cell of the ANC had looked at stolen security police documents and came to the conclusion that Ngcuka could have been agent RS 452. It has now emerged that RS 452 was in fact Vanessa Brereton, a white woman who had been a lawyer in Port Elizabeth.

Instead of an apology to Ngcuka, we are now being taken on a ride through searches for files in the military, police and national intelligence services.

The fact that Ngcuka was dragged to court as a possible state witness, which he refused to be, is somehow supposed to mean he was a spy by another name.

Many innocent, but committed, cadres of the ANC were tortured and some died in camps in exile simply because someone had said what has now been said about Ngcuka.

Those who in the past may have made such accusations seem bent to repeat the same to obfuscate an investigation that should not worry them if they were innocent.

In Lusaka, Luanda or Dar es Salaam, there were no Hefer commissions to get to the bottom of the mess.

A spying accusation alone was enough to condemn people to torture - or worse.

The coterie of accusers sound more hollow each day as they scurry around looking for people to back accusations already made. What a sight, what a pity!

The greater pity, however, remains that it is this kind of nonsense that robs the media of the chance to feature the achievements of the financial services charter as well as we should.

With acknowledgements to Mathatha Tsedu and the Sunday Times.