Forty-five years ago this week, on June 17 1972, the Watergate burglary unleashed a political drama that saw Richard Nixon resign in disgrace as US president two years later. Thus was born a new breed of journalist, a media warrior whose pen alone could unseat the occupant of the world's most powerful office.
Enter the investigative journalist and, with him, the golden era of investigative reporting.
Glorified in the film All the President's Men, clones of the Washington Post's ace reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were soon mangling prose and fiddling expense accounts in newsrooms around the world, and having secret trysts with their own Deep Throats. They were emboldened by a belief that their investigations alone could topple governments, no less.
Sadly, in countries from supposed democracies to brazen dictatorships, the dream of a new high-water mark of accountability too often ended in tragedy as media colleagues have been harassed, ruined and even murdered to halt their uncovering of the truth.
For investigative reporters fishing in more tranquil waters, however, the new "power journalism" came with all the glamorous frills enjoyed by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the film.
Among the perks were takeaway dinners, poor skin condition, late nights and antisocial hours. It's probably no coincidence that the two aces were both "between relationships" at the time, with plenty of time on their hands to knock on doors.
It was the age before electronic communication and the internet. Often the information gleaned by the Watergate team amounted to no more than a few lines in a story, the meagre words the result of hours of back-room work.
In some cases the information was passed on by a nod of the head, and in one instance that backfired on the Watergate team. Bernstein tried to verify information by having his contact either stay silent or put down the telephone, a "system" that led to the only serious mistake in all of the Post's Watergate coverage.
Here in South Africa, the Gupta e-mails have turned what for years has been a trickling suspicion of mendacious venality into a deluge of irrefutable proof of outright criminality reaching the highest office of the land. Faced with thousands of e-mails, investigative reporters here have a unique challenge of reverse-engineering: they now have to "confirm" what appears to all of us to be blindingly obvious — namely the hijacking and subversion of an entire state for personal financial gain.
Where Watergate became merely a film, Guptagate offers the promise of an eternal telenovela, a melodrama with a by-now familiar cast, top-billed by the Gupta brothers on the one hand, and President Jacob Zuma and his hand-picked finance minister, Malusi Gigaba, on the other.
Yet, in spite of all the possible leads for our law-enforcement authorities to follow, the studied inaction that has greeted the Gupta e-mail saga is more than a little dispiriting to those who harboured high hopes of accountability in the democratic era, and raises the question whether investigative journalism on its own can undo some of the harm that politicians and hangers-on do in everyday political life when they stray.
In the years since Nixon became the first US president to resign, to avoid the inevitable ejection from office that awaited him, the role of the press in the Watergate saga has been reassessed, and the importance of the Watergate disclosures cut down to size, much like an investigative reporter's expense account in this new era of extreme bean-counting.
The revisionist Watergate narrative gives more prominence in Nixon's downfall to the role of the FBI, the US Senate and its inquiries and hearings, the Supreme Court and Democratic Party dominance in both houses of Congress to counter the Republican incumbent in the White House.
And not forgetting, too, that Nixon himself played an important role in his own demise, with his insistence on recording his Oval Office conversations, tapes that ultimately produced the Smoking Gun tape, which provided sufficient grounds for a potential obstruction-of-justice charge.
However, even in the midst of the Watergate scandal, one should not forget that Nixon won re-election in a landslide in late 1972.
Closer to home, and just a few years later, the apartheid political establishment found itself engulfed in what became known as the Information Scandal, or Muldergate — named after Connie Mulder, who had been appointed "information minister" in prime minister John Vorster's government.
Whereas in the Gupta saga politicians are used by the Gupta family to influence key decisions, in the Information Scandal the politicians tried to use a businessman, fertiliser magnate Louis Luyt, to change public opinion.
Faced with what they saw as negative press coverage, Mulder tried to get Luyt to buy the left-leaning Rand Daily Mail, an attempt that was scuppered by the nimble footwork of some of Johannesburg's leading business figures. Undaunted, and no doubt fortified by the R63-million in state funds that had been channelled to a secret slush fund, Luyt went on to found The Citizen, as a counterweight to the English press.
The tricky accounting that went on led to a scathing auditor-general report, and the appointment of a select committee in parliament, which found widespread evidence of abuse of public funds.
It was a high-water mark for South African investigative journalism, with the dramatic Rand Daily Mail headline "It's all true", aptly capturing the drama of the moment.
Like Watergate, the Information Scandal was a brave era for the English press in South Africa, which first broke the story. Later, when Mulder's ambitions had been frustrated and successor PW Botha was ensconced in his Tuynhuys offices, Botha appointed the Erasmus Commission, whose findings forced Vorster to resign from the ceremonial presidency to which he had been "elevated".
It is a sobering thought that, even in the apartheid era, what modicum of public accountability existed played a large part in ending Vorster's career and getting to the bottom of the scandal. After all, parliament's select committee report forced Vorster out of office.
Fast-forward to modern-day South Africa. With all the disclosures in the public arena, the result has been a deafening silence.
Armed with an exhaustive constitution that drips checks and balances, it seems nothing can be done to halt the Zuma/Gupta juggernaut.
What role for the police, the NPA, the public protector, the auditor-general, the Hawks (apparently hard at work to establish who leaked the e-mails) and parliament?
None, it seems.
Short of a substantial political bowel movement in the ANC, there appears no chance of Zuma being unseated or called to account any time soon.
In the case of Watergate, even top Republicans turned on Nixon, with Republican grandee Barry Goldwater putting Nixon under pressure to quit.
And, in the case of South Africa, it was the political ambition of Botha that saw off Vorster and Mulder.
So, missing in the Gupta e-mail saga are two vital ingredients that amplify the press disclosures of malfeasance, namely, independent institutions to act as a counterweight to the politicians and a recognition by senior figures in their own parties that it is time for the serial offender to go.
In short, independence and civic-mindedness and political backbone.
Can it really be that Zuma and the Guptas will continue to get off the hook because South Africa lacks both?
Let's hope not.
bulgerp@sundaytimes.co.za..