Only incurable optimists would ever have anticipated that the Hefer Commission could produce a quick and conclusive finding about so murky a subject as the cloak-and-dagger world of spies during the apartheid era.

Any such hopes were dashed during the opening hours of the commission yesterday when ANC veteran Mac Maharaj and senior foreign ministry official Mo Shaik, the sponsors of the claim that national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid spy, were granted another month to prepare their submissions and find documents.

Initial expectations were that the commission would be concluded within a month so that the core investigation into whether deputy president Jacob Zuma solicited a R500 000 bribe from a French arms company could resume. It would now seem that Maharaj, the Shaik brothers and their political masters have notched up their third successive victory: the first was to divert attention from the core issues of the bribe and Zuma's relationship with Shaik by getting the spy story into the media; the second was to get Mbeki to appoint a commission to avert attention further; the third was the further delay of the commission.

Time might tell what motivated Maharaj, who was in the cabinet when Ngcuka was appointed, to play the spy card.

Mbeki insists that the "masses of the people" will never forgive those who have accused ANC members of being apartheid spies. That is a menacing threat coming from the leader of the ANC. But it seems that both Justice Minsiter Penuell Maduna and Ngcuka have also made some major tactical blunders. In Maduna's case they appear to have been fateful.

Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has a point when he says that the commission in its current form is involved in an issue of "marginal current relevance". Mbeki has himself questioned the relevance of spy-naming after 10 years of democracy. Leon suggests a way out for Mbeki: extend the terms of reference of the Hefer Commission to include the core issue of whether Zuma and Maduna are guilty of corruption.

With acknowledgements to the editor and the Cape Times.