The mystery source for a famously accurate report on Mbeki's address to an ANC parliamentary caucus meeting has finally come forward.

On October 6 2000 the Mail & Guardian published an article by its political editor, Howard Barrell, on an address by President Thabo Mbeki to the ANC caucus in parliament the week before. The article was headed: "Mbeki fingers the CIA in AIDS conspiracy" and it reported on a series of bizarre pronouncements by Mbeki on the AIDS issue. Its account of these remarks was so detailed that many ANC MPs were convinced that there were electronic listening devices in the caucus room, and the following week it was swept by the police for bugs.

In his new book "After the Party" the former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein admits to being the primary source for the article. He writes that as Mbeki spoke to caucus he was taking detailed notes (as he always did) on his Psion mini computer. Despite his horror at what he was hearing, "I forced myself to refocus on what the President was saying, feeling that this was so much more important than all the other megabytes of notes I assiduously took in meetings."

After Mbeki had finished speaking, Feinstein continues, "cheers broke out, grew in volume, interspersed with cries of ‘Viva Thabo Viva'. The psychosis of the crow enveloped many of the 260 MPs crammed into the Chamber." After the meeting he stumbled back to his office where he sat shaking. "Who did I hate more? Thabo for his deadly views, my colleagues who had cheered the empty, pathetic rhetoric, or myself and other colleagues who were unable to stand up and say what we knew to be so clear."

He proceeded, in a daze, to print out his transcript of Mbeki's address. "I picked up the papers, put them in a brown envelope and with that mixture of dread and determination that accompanies impulsive actions telephoned" Barrell, and asked to meet in the Gardens. "Up until this point in my career," Feinstein writes, "I had had extensive contact with journalists but had never provided them with confidential information."

They met and there Feinstein hurriedly told Barrell "what was in the envelope, pouring out my anger, trying to overcome my impotence. I asked him to protect my identity. The next week's Mail & Guardian was headlined: ‘Mbeki in AIDS Conspiracy Outburst. The paper reprinted my notes almost verbatim." The introduction to the report on those notes stated, "A number of ANC MPs, speaking... on condition of anonymity, contributed to this account of Mbeki's address to the caucus."

What probably saved Feinstein from any real scrutiny was the fact that the ANC leadership were utterly convinced that Mbeki's address had been bugged. He writes, "At the next caucus meeting the Deputy President was seething. He bellowed from his podium that some members of the caucus must have spoken to the media to contextualise the remarks they [the media] had clearly recorded."

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The DA has long complained about the answers, or lack thereof, issued by government departments to their parliamentary questions. However, the DA weblog - insidepolitics.org.za - reports on a new and Kafkaesque development. In July this year the DA submitted a question to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (among others) asking: "Whether, in respect of each of the past two years including 2007, his department has obtained any sponsorships; if so, with regard to each sponsorship obtained, (a) which (i) company and (ii) parastatal were they received from, (b) what was the amount received and (c) what was it used for?"

Three months later the department issued their response. The question asked had been changed to: "Whether the Department obtained scholarships in 2007?" The Minister confidently replied, "Yes."