A few days after former police minister Sydney Mufamadi and acting State Security Agency director-general Loyiso Jafta gave evidence to the state capture commission, a journalist friend was confronted by his worried wife with the question: "You are not among those who were on the SSA payroll, are you?"

He says he was taken aback, it having never crossed his mind that anyone would ever have reason to suspect him of working for the spooks. Now his wife, of all people, was asking. Satisfied by his answer, the wife explained that she had been worried when she had heard in the news that some members of the fourth estate unethically received payments from our troubled spy agency...