In July and August 1997, the Mail & Guardian and newspapers in the Independent stable chipped away at a story about what would have been South Africa's largest ever weapons sale. Finally, the Sunday Independent risked criminal sanction by ignoring an interdict obtained by state-owned armaments company Denel when it published the identity of the client country: Saudi Arabia.

The publication sparked a fierce row about whether the privately owned media — perceived then as white-dominated — were reckless and unpatriotic. Two senior black editors, Jon Qwelane and Thami Mazwai, lambasted the disclosure as a threat to a deal that would protect South African jobs and industry. They portrayed the decision to publish as driven by an anti-government, ultimately anti-black agenda.

They dismissed arguments that the deal should be publicly debated because the Saudi regime was corrupt and undemocratic, and because the weapons were destined for an inherently unstable region.

Mazwai argued that, in cases like this, media freedom should bow to the "national interest", which he understood to be largely defined by the democratically elected state. Today we publish details about that deal that show the instincts of the editors who chose to publish that story in 1997 were correct — and that their decision to adopt their own standards of what was in the "national interest" was justified. Arms deals are notoriously corrupt, and arms deals with Saudi Arabia demonstrably so. The revelation that Denel was to pay more than a quarter of the purchase price back to a Saudi agent in "commission" can leave no one in any doubt that a proportion of this money would have been used to reward decision--makers in the Saudi hierarchy.

On top of that, we now know that Denel had, by August 1997, paid out about R100-million in advance commissions, contrary to its own procedures, and to no ultimate benefit. The Scorpions are investigating whether that decision was not also oiled by a trickle of dirty money back to South Africa.

The R100-million blunder is but one of a number of expensive Denel dummies sold to the public in the "national interest". The fabulous offsets promised as part of our own arms purchase extravaganza were also going to put Denel on its feet — even if it meant buying British jet trainers at double the price of the ones the air force wanted. Earlier this year Denel chief executive Victor Moche exploded that myth, telling Parliament the Denel offsets were barely profitable.

Now we have the Airbus military airlifter deal that is also going to -rescue Denel — at a R12-billion cost to the taxpayer — and which has also been shrouded in the secrecy that must be accorded to the "national interest". The media are not infallible — but neither, by a long shot, is the state.

This newspaper will continue to defend the right and duty of the media to define for itself the "national interest", notwithstanding attempts to portray us as some kind of unpatriotic elite.

With acknowledgement to the Mail & Guardian.