Somerset West - The national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) Bulelani Ngcuka says despite allegations against him, he feels he still enjoys the confidence of President Thabo Mbeki and the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Ngcuka, who is engaged in a running battle with deputy president Jacob Zuma and former transport minister Mac Maharaj over spy allegations, said on Tuesday the moment he did not enjoy this confidence, he would quit.

He was speaking to journalists in Somerset West after delivering an address at a national prosecuting authority seminar on money laundering, attended by about 60 prosecutors and investigators from the Western Cape and the Free State.

He said when Mbeki, then deputy president, asked him five years ago to take the job of NDPP, he did not want it.

"I told him that its going to be a tough job I can not do this without your support, and I can not do this job without the support of the ANC. That's a fact. The day I feel that I don't have that support I walk out of this job.

"The minute I feel that I've lost that confidence of the government and the confidence of the ruling party in this country, I walk out, immediately. That day has not arrived yet. I have not felt that," Ngcuka said.

He said he was not merely confident about next week's Hefer Commission hearings, where Maharaj is due to testify on claims that Ngcuka was an apartheid spy, but "certain".

"I'm absolutely certain because I was never a spy, so there can't be any other decision... its not as if there is any doubt about it," Ngcuka said.

"I think I've learned a lot in the last five months, I think more than I've learnt in the last 49 years of my existence," Ngcuka said.

Earlier he told the money laundering seminar, that though South Africa had sophisticated legislation against money laundering, there had been only a handful of prosecutions.

One of the biggest challenges facing law enforcement was therefore to effectively use the legislative tools already in place, Ngcuka said.

Money laundering posed a serious threat to South Africa's fledgling democracy and the government structures that so many people had fought so hard for.

With acknowledgements to Sapa and www.news24.co.za.