Justice Minister Penuell Maduna says that it is a "strange coincidence" that twin allegations of impropriety have been brought against his office within days of each other by two distinct sources.

Maduna suggests there may be a hidden agenda behind the allegations made against him by his deputy director-general, Mike Tshishonga, and those made against him on Monday by mining magnate Brett Kebble.

The justice minister declined to speculate on the motives behind the attacks, but a number of reasons have been mooted.

Kebble's allegations about prosecutions chief Bulelani Ngcuka and the "abuse of the systems of the department of justice" are notable in that they are made by a man due in court next week to answer criminal charges of share manipulation.

Equally, in the other matter, Tshi shonga has a labour matter pending against the minister for allegedly sidelining him in his job.

With the word corruption now becoming an increasingly popular tag with which to smear highly placed officials, Maduna has dismissed Kebble's allegations as "nonsensical" and Tshishonga's charges as "nauseating" and unsubstantiated.

Certainly, the justice minister has never been scared to speak his mind before even when it leads to censure as in the case of accusations made against the auditor-general's office back in 1997 during his tenure as minerals and energy affairs minister.

If there is a hidden agenda to the new charges against his office, there are any a number of sources.

In the recent arms scandal that threatened to topple Deputy President Jacob Zuma, Maduna was drawn into the acrimonious mudslinging between Ngcuka and the scandal-plagued deputy president.

In that case, Maduna supported Ngcuka despite stinging criticism from Zuma's office over the aborted investigation into the allegations of corruption against the deputy president.

Much of what has transpired has taken place behind closed doors, but it is alleged that after Zuma insulted Ngcuka, Maduna stormed out of a cabinet meeting in a rage.

With government and cabinet members apparently gagged on the issue, some sources have suggested that Maduna threatened to quit his post, a suggestion he vehemently denies.

Now Maduna is adamant that Kebble must come forward to prove the allegations he made before the Hefer commission.

But Maduna's efforts to bring people to book in the past have left him scarred.

When he was still minister of mineral and energy affairs in 1997, Maduna accused former Central Energy Fund chief Kobus van Zyl of financial mismanagement over R170m which allegedly went missing from the fund apparently part of the shadowy past of the fund under the apartheid government.

But this brewed into a thorny war between Maduna and former auditor-general Henri Kluever, whom Maduna suggested had connived with the apartheid government and covered up the theft of R170m.

However, Maduna was rapped over the knuckles for this after the public protector found he did not have the evidence to support his claims against Kluever.

At the core of the fresh allegations against Maduna's office and Ngcuka can be found the phrases "corruption", "abuse of power by key officials" and the overriding insinuation that there are disastrous cracks in the custodian of the South African legal system.

An irate Maduna says there is no basis for this and expects the Hefer commission to sweep these allegations from the deck entirely.

With acknowledgements to Rob Rose and the Business Day.