Cape Talk, Wednesday evening

There hasn't been a judgment, John. No. And in fact, as I understand it, the court has adjourned for the day and will recommence tomorrow morning with the sort of instructions from the judge that the parties try and find each other here to present an agreed way forward. Which suggests that the judge is not completely opposed to having at least parts of the trial have.

In public? I think that that's right. Obviously, until we get a judgment from her, it's speculative to some extent. But as you say, the fact that she has indicated to the parties that she would very much prefer if they can reach a settlement as to the way forward suggests that she is not convinced that the way forward would require a blanket exclusion of the public and the media from these proceedings.

Security agency, look, what you say in court papers doesn't necessarily reflect the totality of your view, and they may well be persuaded that at least some of it. But one of the difficulties, one of the practical difficulties is to, because you don't know what the evidence is. You don't know exactly what they are accused of in any detail. You don't know what documents might be needed.

Coming to that kind of agreement might be not that easy. Well, I think that that's exactly right. And I mean, one has to bear in mind that the fact is that the public would have had no idea that this trial was happening, right? We've already had apparently five days of this trial conducted in complete secrecy, but for the fact that Carl Cowan of News 24 was given a tip-off that these proceedings were happening.

The fact is, the approach of the media parties and the Campaign for Free Expression is that in line with the jurisprudence that has already been long established by our highest courts there may well be valid national security considerations relating to particular parts of the evidence or particular testimony or witnesses' protection, but that has to be very specifically and exactingly justified for that to be withheld.

From the public. Because, you know, as you say, it's not only that we, I mean, this is the first criminal prosecution of senior state security officials emanating from the Zondo Commission report and findings and from the high-level panel review. It's clear that there is extraordinary public interest here, not only in respect of this trial, but also for our ability to monitor the criminal justice system and how the court functions.