I first met my co-editor-to-be James Myburgh in one of those coffee shops in St. George's Mall, Cape Town, in 2001. He was a young researcher with the opposition Democratic Alliance in parliament; I had retired as the morning newspaper group's London editor, still dabbling in journalism, but escaping the UK winter. James had been a student at Cape Town university, under Professor Hermann Giliomee, and it was at Hermann's house in Stellenbosch that I was shown (for my comment) an article written by James.

James's article was on Mbeki, and I was so impressed by it that I showed it to the editor of the Sunday Independent, who was also impressed. This is what occasioned my meeting with James at the coffee shop. We discussed the as yet unpublished article. (See Mbeki and the total formula).

I next saw James in 2002 when he arrived at Oxford university to start work on a PhD (about the ANC since its takeover of government in 1994). We met rarely - James was embedded (as the military would say) in St Antony's College, and I was living in London. But, at one of our meetings, we mused on the wonders of cyberspace, and James said casually, 'Why don't we start a blog?'. I reacted enthusiastically, and we agreed to launch a blog.

There was a snag. I had almost no idea of what a blog was. Meeting a knowledgeable friend, I told him about our plans, and asked, What is a blog? He said it was a personal web site on which you posted things. What things? I asked. Anything, he replied. And what is posting? My friend gave me an odd look, murmured something about me having a long way to go, and left.

Looking up Wikipedia now I read: 'Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs'.

It was obvious to me by then that if two novices, unfunded, embarked on a blog, one at least had to be computer literate. That was James. I had worked for years on a computer, but basically my typing skills had been learnt on an old Remington, and the digits I used were two forefingers and two thumbs (bizarre even by Remington standards). So James arranged with someone in America to design a simple blog for us, a London outfit hosts it, and we were in business - writing 'anything'.

At first, we wrote analytical articles on the current political situation. Serious stuff. Then friends, mostly academics, volunteered contributions. Hermann was the first - a lengthy address he had delivered at a symposium in Spain. I ran it in full (accumulating air miles, so to speak). Others pitched in: Professor David Welsh and his AIDS expert wife Virginia; Professor Heribert Adam (British Columbia) and his academic wife Kogila (co-authors of books); ex-Oxford Don and word spinner Bill Johnson, married to a Russian academic, Irina Filatova. Many others contributed.

From there we moved on to browsing through the online websites of South African newspapers more thoroughly: more particularly the Sunday Times, Mail & Guardian, Business Day, City Press, Sowetan, but forever widening the search area. I observed the rules of attribution, naming and dating not only the publications, but also the writers. Nobody seemed to be unhappy.

Throughout its life-span, the blog had no income, nor did it make any significant payments. Hence our ever-lasting gratitude to those who came to our rescue with editorial contributions. Every helping hand was welcome, because a blog is a treadmill: you master it, or it devours you. The computer posture itself is a killer, catching you in the small of the back. It is my firm belief that, as time takes it course, the world will soon be half-full of computer cripples.

So what drives bloggers, and in particular journalists turned bloggers? Why do we lock ourselves in the computer's deadly embrace, confident that someone wants to read our precious prose? Why do we have to become like the Ancient Mariner:

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns

I had noted by then that resource-wise James had an exceptional catchment area, mental and on his computer, a gift for original thought, and a lilting lucidity of language. Although he was a slave to both a PhD thesis and a daily blog, he managed occasionally to slip off the treadmill. In irritation, I would assume he just went walkabout, but then I recalled that someone in the DA's research division had advised me that they, too, had encountered James's Dr Who act: James's abrupt disappearances and equally abrupt returns - but bearing the gift of gold dust.

At last, I grasped what was happening: James goes off for a think (in the way most journalists, with writer's block, go off for a drink). One awaits his return. Grudgingly, I knew that when the choice lay between observing a deadline and thinking-through-a-thought, James opted for the latter. What absolved it all was - the gold dust. It was just the particular way James got lost and found his way home again. What was the title of the Russell Crowe movie? A Beautiful Mind. That says it.

As for my deadlines, my wife bought me an alarm clock. It looked like an over-ripe tomato, and she set it to ring every 20 minutes. At that signal, I would have to get up and walk around the house several times. Great in theory, it did not work - 20 minutes infallibly became two hours. Alas, this is one of the reasons why we are closing the blog: the medical damage it has inflicted on me.

The blog was hard work and fun. We reached a peak last month, but there was an earlier peak in 2005 when Schabir Shaik was sent to the slammer for 15 years, when Jacob Zuma was charged with corruption, and later when his rape trial fell apart. Our readers were widespread: the charts show that well over half of our traffic comes from the United States; next comes South Africa and Europe. We even have three readers in China. We deduced that our readers are of fairly high calibre, but as the charts show, high-minded or not, they are also interested in the spicier items of life - which Zuma delivered with great gusto. Did Mbeki really not comprehend that he had taken on a showman?

The blog for some considerable time consisted of no more than James and me. Then Paul Trewhela emerged from nowhere. I knew the name, but had never met Paul, who now lived in Aylesbury, outside London. Paul had worked as a journalist on The Star, the Rand Daily Mail and News/Check magazine in Johannesburg between 1962 and 1964; in 1963/64 he was editor of Freedom Fighter, the underground journal of the ANC military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, during the Rivonia Trial of Nelson Mandela and his colleagues; and was then a political prisoner himself between 1964 and 1967. In exile, together with his former prison colleague Dr Baruch Hirson, he was co-editor of a banned journal of South African studies, Searchlight South Africa, published in London between 1988 and 1995.

Paul is a painter, but also a journalist, a real pro. He knew exactly what to write, how to write it, and to gift-wrap it for me to post on the blog. Like James, he had an extraordinary memory and filing system, and his output was both prodigious and immaculate. He had worked in the ANC underground with journalists such as Ruth First and Hilda Bernstein and had known activists who later became men of power, such as ANC security chiefs Ronnie Kasrils and Sizakele Sigxashe, when they were young men.

With this background, Paul was able to unlock for our readers years of not merely memories, but personal experiences. Paul had seen the dark side of the ANC in the 1960-1990 exile years, and it was ugly: the terrible detention camps, the brutal treatment, the Stalinisation of top leaders. Some youngsters would slip illegally out of South Africa and seek refuge with the ANC in Tanzania or Angola, but find themselves arrested for 'spying' for Pretoria's Special Branch. Paul's material was unique and particularly valuable for historians. There were times, after James's departure for Johannesburg, when without Paul I would have closed the blog down.

The blog had an unintended effect. Because we read the media so intensively, we were able to watch more closely the flowering of black intellectualism. For years most black writers had been locked into an unquestioning loyalty to the ANC, even when they became increasingly uneasy over the movement's direction. They just could not cut the umbilical cord. Suddenly, the Zuma catalyst changed everything. The more the arm lock in which the ANC held its intellectuals tightened, the more the quality and wisdom of black journalism soared. Assorted white, Indian, Coloured and other black journalists took guidance from the fresh writing.

To start the blog at the time we did put us in the ringside seats for the nasty battle between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. It should have been obvious to Mbeki what was happening: that almost every move he made against Zuma reacted to push him into even further isolation. But it is still difficult to grasp how aloof Mbeki had allowed himself to become, and how abysmal the skills were of his advisers. Who defeated Mbeki? He dug his own holes.

The pity of closing our blog at a time like this is that just when black intellectualism is flowering, poised for the new dawn, there is no ANC legacy to welcome it. If there is an ANC legacy, it is buried somewhere in the rubble of the Mbeki-Zuma warfare, and it will be a mission of talented blacks to find it. Mbeki's (forced) bequest to the country is Zuma, and Zuma's bequest (unless he surprises us all) could be a wasteland.

It is little wonder that what wounds many black intellectuals most, as their columns - ever more biting - reveal, is the shame of it all for their own people.

This is an edited version of an article first published on www.ever-fasternews.com on that weblog's retirement