The African National Congress has dismissed the possibility that mounting allegations of corruption, bribery and inappropriate conduct against Deputy President Jacob Zuma will damage his standing at the party's national conference.

"The ANC will not discuss these allegations and it will not have any impact on the deputy president," said spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama on Sunday.

"Deputy President Zuma's record is impeccable and such allegations are really a very minor thing considering his contribution to the ANC."

Ngonyama said the sustained media reports about alleged wrongdoing on the part of Zuma were "really just allegations".

"They are allegations until they have been proven to be fact... and reports in the newspapers don't determine the position the ANC holds," he said.

ANC insiders said Zuma was expected to retain the deputy presidency of the ANC at its 51st national conference in Stellenbosch next week.

Meanwhile, the secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) has denied inviting Zuma's financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, to the initiative's conference on the financing of Nepad held in Senegal in April.

The Sunday Times reported that Shaik had accompanied Zuma to Senegal on the official government trip five months after Shaik had been arrested and charged with being in possession of classified cabinet minutes.

This allegedly gave Shaik an unfair advantage over competitors bidding for contracts in the government's controversial multibillion-rand arms deal.

Shaik's lawyer reportedly said that his client had been invited by the Nepad secretariat, but the secretariat has rejected this suggestion.

"If Schabir Shaik was invited, it was not by the Nepad secretariat," spokesperson Thaninga Shope-Linney said on Sunday after consulting the head of the secretariat, Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu, in Ghana.

She added it was possible Shaik had been invited by another party, as "the conference was organised by the Senegalese government."

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Michaels and The Star.