Justice Minister Penuell Maduna is also to face the Hefer commission over allegations that he may have been an apartheid spy and misused his office because of "past obligations to the apartheid regime".

President Thabo Mbeki agreed yesterday to extend the terms of reference of the Hefer Commission, apparently on Maduna's advice.

The commission, set up to investigate allegations that National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid agent, was to have sat yesterday, but the sitting was postponed to Wednesday.

The allegations against Ngcuka were made in the heat of a row between him and Deputy President Jacob Zuma over the Scorpions' investigation into Zuma and decision not to prosecute him.

Maduna was not available for comment and it could not be established whether the broadening of the inquiry's terms of reference arose from allegations made by Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille.

Last month De Lille called for the inquiry to be broadened to include other high-ranking members of the ANC she had named in parliament in 1997 as having been alleged apartheid informers. Her list of seven names was apparently based on a list handed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996.

De Lille made the appeal after Maduna challenged her in parliament to repeat to Justice Joos Hefer, the retired judge carrying out the inquiry, the allegations she had made in 1997 and for which parliament had tried to sanction her.

The MP has vowed to testify to the commission.

In terms of a directive to be gazetted today, the commission is to "inquire into, make findings, report on and make recommendations" on whether Ngcuka or Maduna have "improperly and in violation of the law, directly or indirectly, taken advantage of or misused the prosecuting authority and, in particular, abused, advanced, promoted, prejudiced or undermined the rights and/or interests of any person or organisation, due to past obligations to the apartheid regime".

A justice official confirmed this implied that the commission would also probe whether Maduna had been an apartheid informer.

Before this the commission's mandate had been only to determining whether Ngcuka had been a security policeman or a national intelligence agent with the number RS452 or any other code name.

With acknowledgements to Christelle Terreblanche and the Cape Times.