If forced to testify, she would like to do so last - after Mac Maharaj, Mo Shaik and Jacob Zuma.

This was the view expressed yesterday by Ranjeni Munusamy, the journalist who originated the newspaper article that led to the establishment of the Hefer Commission - set up to probe whether Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid-era spy.

Munusamy's legal team filed papers on her behalf to review and set aside a decision by retired judge Joos Hefer compelling her to give evidence before the commission.

Munusamy's application is the first to ask a court to adjudicate on the nature and extent of the protection afforded to journalists by the constitution.

She was subpoenaed to give evidence after it emerged that she was the driving force behind a City Press story claiming Ngcuka had been investigated by the ANC for allegedly being a spy.

"I do not wish to be uncooperative or to retard the commission's work, but I strongly believe that, for reasons of conscience, journalistic ethics and my own prior undertakings, I ought not to be ordered to provide any information other than that already supplied by me to City Press and was published," she said.

Munusamy added that she had undertaken to her sources not to reveal their identities. "I have been threatened with physical danger if I reveal the names of sources."

Indicating that she would prefer to give evidence after witnesses such as Karl Edwards (the handler for agent RS452), National Director of Public Prosecutions Ngcuka's principal accusers, Shaik and Maharaj, and Deputy President Zuma, she said: "If I am called last, there are prospects that by then my sources, or some of them, may have already come forward, that others will release me from my obligations of confidentiality."

She asked the court to overturn the decision by Hefer, saying his "decisions are so unreasonable ... that no reasonable person could have taken them".

Munusamy added: "It seems ... the real motivation for the commission is an attempt to deal with internal party-political wrangling and not to address any issue of genuine public concern."

She said the spy allegations were not the type of matter where the might of the Commissions Act should be invoked, as President Thabo Mbeki could easily establish the truth "by requesting the agencies who hold the information to give him a report".

Munusamy quotes an interview with Minister of Justice Penuell Maduna, where he said the commission was "an attempt to stop bleeding in the movement, cauterising wounds infected by the continued back-stabbing, smear campaigns, and allegations of spying and misuse of office".

Ngcuka, in a replying affidavit, said that in his view Munusamy's application was misconceived, and was really designed to frustrate the commission.

"Her desperation to publish the story, despite the fact that she breached the ethics of her profession and risked losing her employment, which eventually occurred, clearly indicates that she was playing a role much greater than that of journalist," Ngcuka said.

The case will be heard by the Bloemfontein High Court on November 4.

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and The Star.