You could have heard a pin drop. The new French foreign minister had flitted into Pretoria during a busy tour of Africa, a tour to spread the word of democracy and the comforting assurances that France stood by, ready to help the dark continent.

But I had dropped a clanger amid all the Gallic bonhomie at the press conference Michel Barnier held after attending last year's R75-million presidential inauguration.

In one of the conference rooms in the Sheraton Hotel, opposite the Union Buildings, bathed in the warm glow of French television camera lights, I had wanted to know if it was still official Paris policy to pay bribes to African leaders.

I hadn't raised a wild accusation.

My own deputy president had been tainted by that particular brush, and it was a fact accepted as true beyond reasonable doubt in a notorious $300-million (more than R2-billion) arms-deal trial in Paris, known as "l'affaire Elf", that had ended a few months earlier.

The court had found that it was French state policy to use cash in the coffers of its oil and arms parastatals to bribe African leaders. I wanted to know if the slush fund still existed and, if so, what kind of democracy Barnier was promoting in Africa.

Unbeknown to me, it was no longer fashionable in Paris press circles to ask questions about corruption.

The exhausting, eight-year judicial inquisition the country had just undergone had wrung its soul; it had tainted the reputations of the highest officials and institutions; it had failed to bring down even one of the kingpins lording over the inner circle of power in Paris.

L'affaire had involved a company called Thomson-CSF - I don't know if you have ever heard of it - and the payment of $250-million in bribes to foreign governments in order to swing a frigate deal France's way.

Yes. You didn't read that incorrectly: $250-million. That's dollars, not rands.

Bribes - euphemistically called "retro-commissions" in Paris - had been paid to Taiwanese officials to lure them to the honey pot. Even more cash - as well as the secret plans to the frigates - had gone the way of mainland China to overcome the Red Dragon's umbrage at the deal.

And even more had been paid to German chancellor Helmut Kohl's party to conquer its opposition to the deal.

By way of comparison, it made the R500 000 bribes paid by Thomson through Schabir Shaik to our own deputy president seem paltry, humiliating, embarrassing.

But I was a South African, from a country only starting to get to grips with the many meanings of international detente. South Africa was not jaded or disillusioned.

I was sure my readers would be outraged at the thought of foreigners daring to try to buy on the cheap a democracy that had taken so much effort to establish.

So I had asked Barnier what kind of lessons in democracy he presumed France could teach us poor Africans. He refused to comment, saying he never spoke about court cases.

Barnier knew his country's reputation stank in Europe, as did all trades that the fair continent's arms dealers had pressed on the rest of the world. He also knew that France had failed miserably in cleaning itself of the stench.

Unfortunately, this had always traditionally been a matter of European housekeeping. In the days before the Internet, such a matter would be unknown in Africa, and white people could come here and pretend to be pure.

They could mutter about things like "good corporate governance", "transparency in government", "independence of the judiciary", "lowering tariff barriers to free trade", and pretend that they practised these virtues at home.

We would grovel and promise we would do our best to learn. Somehow, we never managed to get off our knees.

And now we are seeing the consequences of doing business the European way.

With acknowledgements to Alameen Templeton and The Star.