Let's say Winnie Madikizela-Mandela did say the things that she allegedly said about her former husband, Nelson Mandela. Our media, that is the entire South African Fourth Estate, should naturally be interested in the hitherto unknown - or unpublished - quite controversial views.
So strong are the views expressed that if Madikizela-Mandela owned up to them, they would be certain to divide our fragile national unity as well as create serious schism in the ties that bound us all together when we sealed the hugely hailed negotiated settlement.
Madikizela-Mandela is an extraordinary South African who invokes different feelings among many people.
To some, such as the London Evening Standard, which first published the so-called interview with her, she is no doubt a pariah.
Yet to millions of South Africans, particularly the formerly disenfranchised, she is a struggle icon.
For the sake of our fledgling democracy, whose views matter most: Madikizela-Mandela's or the London daily's?
My answer is certainly not the latter.
It is against this backdrop that I believe the local media should never have sheepishly glorified a questionable foreign piece of reporting bearing such a great potential to divide our nation and cast aspersions over the legacy of a man widely regarded as the father of our democracy.
Our media erred when they went big with a disputable "interview" and then ended the article with a sentence which read "Madikizela-Mandela could not be reached for comment".
The prominence given to the piece, written by Nadir Naipaul, who was accompanying her husband - Nobel laureate Sir VS Naipaul - to Madikizela-Mandela's home, could easily have left one with a feeling that the reportage was beyond reproach.
The South African media should not look to British tabloid journalism for affirmation. Ours is a media which has played a sterling role in the abolition of apartheid and the creation of a new society, free and equal and admired by all nations.
We possess the moral high ground and are a far-cry from our peers in the UK and the US, who are shamelessly embedded and act as nonchalant mouth-pieces and propaganda machines for their governments' aggressive foreign policies.
Therefore, when pieces of utter bunkum are dangled before us from far-flung capitals such as London, where the Evening Standard dabbles in fables with little or no concern for our political and social cohesion, we should immediately pause and investigate the authenticity of the information instead of leaping with misguided joy.
Mandela's place in our history is guaranteed.
So is that of his former wife and the mother to two of his very beautiful daughters.
Although the two icons' lives may have spun out differently, no one in their right mind can argue against the fact that the couple played a leading role in the emancipation of black people.
This noble history, despite Madikizela-Mandela's mistakes along the way, can never - and should never - be obliterated by anyone, least of all a section of the foreign media whose main interest in our story is to watch and wait for the bubble to burst.
Such is the modus operandi of the messengers of doom.
When there isn't any bad news to report they'd rather play a subtle role in the creation of tension amid our peaceful co-existence.
Madikizela-Mandela has strenuously denied granting Naipaul an interview.
What is beyond dispute, however, is that a meeting did take place between the three.
For her standing in society, it isn't surprising that many foreign visitors to our country would fancy a pot of tea with Madikizela-Mandela.
In the case of the Naipauls, a mutual friend - the late Fatima Meer - facilitated the meeting on the understanding that the Nobel Peace laureate was eager to hear from the source about how Madikizela-Mandela used her religious beliefs to survive wanton state persecution.
As they sat chatting, Nadir Naipaul took out her notebook and jotted down some notes, presumably for her husband, who was on a fact-finding mission for his book.
Eight months later, those notes suddenly are the heart of a very controversial "interview", and the publishers of that "interview" defend themselves with the publication of a photograph featuring the two visitors standing with their unsuspecting host in Soweto.
The author of the "scoop" is defending herself by saying that Madikizela-Mandela knew she was a journalist and therefore she should have known better. That's pure baloney.
The basics of journalism require that when conducting an interview, the reporter makes it unequivocally clear what the purpose of the interview is.
A spouse, irrespective of their profession, taking down notes as her hubby chats with a prominent host hardly qualifies as an "interview".
Extracting information by surreptitious means for publication is dishonest and immoral, unacceptable and unethical.
A good editor not driven by the "scoop mentality" would have pondered the folly of their ways and the potentially adverse consequences as well as the untold harm their weird decision could cause.
But then again, South Africa isn't their country and no sense of patriotism, nor desire for continued stability for our country, matters to them.
Thus it is time for the media here at home to decide if it will continue to take its cue from the foreign media about the manner in which they cover developments about South Africa.
We should rubbish mediocre reports from overseas about our beautiful land, and pay no mind to the foreign media that peddles political and moral half-truths about why their countries attack weaker sovereign states.
The last thing we need as proud South Africans is to play into the dirty hands of a foreign media that has no interest in the success of our democracy because theirs is, anyway, a sham.