What’s in the top-secret report that former spy boss Billy Masetlha finally got his hands on this week? The National Intelligence Agency will not say what is in the report. Through the state prosecutor, the agency opposed Masetlha’s request for access to the document to support his defence against a fraud charge.

When South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) boss Dali Mpofu led the public broadcaster to quit the South African National Editors’ Forum last week in protest against the ”profit-driven” media’s treatment of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, he neglected to mention a commercial interest that might have clouded his own judgement.

Two security guards at Gauteng finance minister Paul Mashatile’s Johannesburg home threatened Mail & Guardian photographer Lisa Skinner when she took pictures of the property. Skinner this month visited the well-protected house in Kelvin, north of Johannesburg, to take pictures for a story the M&G is investigating.

The decision about whether to re-charge Jacob Zuma may be taken only after the African National Congress’s watershed leadership conference in December, sources close to the National Prosecuting Authority have told the Mail & Guardian. Legal and political considerations mean that National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli may postpone his decision until after the first round of the succession battle is settled.

President Thabo Mbeki does not have to give reasons for firing his ministers, according to spokesperson Mukoni Ratitshanga. Presumably neither does he have to let the rest of the public in when wearing his ANC hat and getting rid of party officials. For if he was bound to explain himself, he would have to say why a senior minister such as Mosoiua Lekota continues to serve in his cabinet when he failed to declare his directorship of a winery and shares he had in a petroleum distribution company.

The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development came in for a bruising when it proposed an increase in powers to regional court magistrates to hand out life sentences. This is the issue Parliament’s portfolio committee on justice and constitutional development has been grappling with for the past two weeks. The proposed amendment seeks to streamline the split system in which regional courts need to refer serious criminal convictions to the high court for sentencing.

South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) CEO Dali Mpofu this week asked his top 20 managers to sign letters consenting to undergo polygraph tests in an effort to determine the source of the leaked internal audit report the Mail & Guardian was interdicted from publishing last week.

Official South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) regulations prevent employees from pursuing private business interests without the prior written permission of group CEO Dali Mpofu. Yet the Mail & Guardian has established that Mpofu is himself a director of no fewer than nine private companies outside the public broadcaster.