The embattled national director of public prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka, yesterday angrily denied allegations that he had been a spy for the apartheid government.

Ngcuka said the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions, NDPP, would take legal action against City Press, the newspaper that made the allegation.

Responding to the "apartheid spy" allegations, Ngcuka's spokesman, Sipho Ngwema, said lawyers had been briefed to take action against City Press.

"We warned City Press on Saturday, and before that, that the allegations were a complete fabrication and we also warned them before that we are dealing with desperate people who have no conscience, who have no honour and integrity and who would even manufacture lies to cover their tracks."

Ngwema said, "Any right-thinking person would have questioned why that report, which was supposedly done in the 1980s, is only cropping up now.

"If there is such a report, why are they not giving it to the president or the relevant government authorities to probe," Ngwema said.

City Press alleged that Ngcuka was investigated by the ANC in the late 1980s to establish whether or not he was an apartheid spy.

Sapa reports that the documents, which were allegedly handed to City Press by a senior investigative journalist, are said to have been sourced from a National Intelligence database.

Meanwhile the battle between Deputy President Jacob Zuma and Ngcuka will be continuing on several fronts this week, starting with the courts this morning, when Ngcuka will file affidavits in the Pretoria High Court in response to Zuma's application last week for access to a fax which he says is "manifestly of great significance" to his defence.

In a bid to clear his name, Zuma has taken Ngcuka to court for publicly making allegations that the state had prima facie evidence of corruption against him but then refusing to take the case to court because the state was unsure if it could win its case.

Charging that he had been "stripped" of the right to a trial by Ngcuka, Zuma said: "I cannot think of any reason consistent with good faith why it was necessary for the first respondent, after having come to the conclusion that he cannot win a case against me, in effect to tell the nation that I am nevertheless guilty."

A charge sheet filed against Schabir Shaik, Zuma's financial adviser, in the Durban Regional Court last month suggests that Zuma accepted money from Shaik or his businesses in exchange for protecting one of the bidders in the arms procurement deal.

Zuma has applied for access to the original French hand-written version of an encrypted fax allegedly written by Alain Thetard, director of the French arms company Thomson-CSF, according to which Shaik helped Zuma to solicit a bribe of R500 000 a year.

And in parliament, the ethics committee and the registrar of members' interests are expected to start a probe this week into Ngcuka's allegations that Zuma did not declare more than a million rand in gifts from Shaik and his Nkobi group of companies in the parliamentary register of members' interests.

National Assembly speaker Frene Ginwala said last Friday she had received and referred Ngcuka's allegations to the committee. Zuma is expected to argue that the alleged gifts were loans.

Committee chairman Lewellyn Landers said the code of conduct for MPs did not require them to declare loans.

Zuma is also expected to face tough questions from the opposition in both houses of parliament this week about his leadership of government's moral regeneration campaign amid allegations of prima facie evidence of corruption on his part.

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Michaels and the Cape Times.