Justice Minister Penuell Maduna has requested the Hefer commission to subpoena Patricia de Lille to testify about spying allegations she made against him in parliament in 1997.

Commission secretary John Bacon has confirmed that Maduna's council, Johnathan Arendse, made the request after De Lille, leader of the Independent Democrats, declined an invitation from Judge Joos Hefer.

"The judge must still rule on Maduna's request because De Lille had said in her response she had nothing to contribute to the commission's work," Bacon said.

This may be due to initial confusion that spying allegations against Maduna were not included in the terms of reference of the Hefer Commission, originally set up to probe allegations of spying against Scorpions chief Bulelani Ngcuka.

Judge Hefer has since clarified the issue, saying that an extension to its brief does include whether Maduna, as Ngcuka's line manager, misused his office "due to past obligations to apartheid", which was equated to spying.

Maduna said in an earlier interview with Independent Newspapers he wanted De Lille to prove her allegations to the commission.

"I want the commission to tell her to surrender all documents that she based the allegations on," Maduna said.

Arendse said he made the formal request in a letter to the judge on Thursday.

De Lille told parliament in 1997 that Maduna's name was included in a list of apartheid spies.

She has since denied that she recently repeated the names to the media, which would have put her allegations outside of parliamentary privilege.

De Lille said she merely assisted journalists by reading the names from the Hansard, parliament's official transcription of sittings.

On earlier threats that he would pursue a separate defamation lawsuit against De Lille, Maduna said his lawyers would first monitor disclosures to the commission before going to court.

With acknowledgement to the Cape Argus.