National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was accused of being apartheid agent RS452 - but later claims by his accusers said he was merely being investigated for being a spy.

A review of video footage of e.tv's Tracking RS452 special report, broadcast a few weeks ago, shows Foreign Affairs adviser and former ANC intelligence operative Mo Shaik associating Ngcuka, head of the National Prosecuting Authority, with RS452.

"... We came to the conclusion that the person, once we fitted all the criteria, we most probably believed to be associated to RS452 was Mr Bulelani Ngcuka," Shaik told e.tv.

"I can in fact tell you that this analysis was put to members of the old apartheid security establishment, and this information stood the test of their knowledge," Shaik said, waving documents purportedly proving Ngcuka's guilt.

In the 1980s, Shaik worked as head of an ANC underground unit based in KwaZulu Natal.

It allegedly infiltrated the then security branch and apartheid intelligence to obtain information about people who could be spying on the ANC for the apartheid regime.

But, in the wake of a confession by former Eastern Cape human rights lawyer Vanessa Brereton that she, in fact, had been RS452, Shaik and former transport minister Mac Maharaj have said, through their attorney Yunus Shaik, that it had not been their contention that Ngcuka was RS452.

More recently, Mo Shaik and Maharaj - whose accusations against Ngcuka led directly to the establishment of the Hefer Commission of Inquiry - have claimed that they had not even named Ngcuka as being a spy for the apartheid regime, but merely that he was under investigation.

Shaik told The Star yesterday that documents in support of his claims that he had brandished during the e.tv broadcast did not belong to him, and he had since taken them back to the person from whom he had borrowed them.

Asked from whom or where he had obtained the documents, Shaik refused to answer the question, suggesting this was a trap by The Star to get him to confess to having broken the law in accessing intelligence reports.

"I was shown the documents, but at the time it was not even material for me to whom they (the documents) belonged," said Shaik.

Questions are being asked about the whereabouts of documents used by both Maharaj and Shaik as the basis of their claims against Ngcuka.

Maharaj and Shaik have asked the Hefer Commission to request documents that contain information which could prove conclusively that Ngcuka was a spy from the NIA, the Secret Service and the police - but the intelligence services have balked at the suggestion.

Marumo Moerane SC, counsel for Ngcuka, showed this week that Maharaj and Shaik were still looking for dirt against Ngcuka which could be used at the commission by trying to access Ngcuka's Unisa academic and student fee records.

Lawyer Jerome Mthembu, whose firm Mthembu & Mahomed represents Shaik and Maharaj, has confirmed that such a request was made to Unisa.

Shaik said yesterday that he was waiting for November 17, the day on which he and Maharaj are expected to make their submissions to the commission.

"I am a man of integrity. I do not get involved in games. Wait until the 17th and see what is placed on record at the commission," he said.

Maharaj has also said he would present his case to the commission.

With acknowledgements to Makhudu Sefara and The Star.