The ANC is to summon the National Prosecuting Authority and its Scorpions investigative unit before Parliament after Deputy President Jacob Zuma urged party leaders to intensify their scrutiny of state organs.

Zuma addressed the ANC's national and provincial whips at a workshop in Cape Town on Tuesday.

ANC Chief Whip Mbulelo Goniwe said party leaders decided after meeting Zuma to summon the Scorpions and to hold separate parliamentary hearings on racism in society and state institutions, including the police and defence forces.

Party sources said Zuma did not directly criticise the Scorpions' investigation of MPs implicated in the R17-million Travelgate scam, but identified the unit as one of the state institutions that should be called to be more accountable to Parliament.

Goniwe said Zuma addressed whips about the role MPs should play, but did not specifically propose either inquiry.

"Of course, such an analysis would start to say: ‘What is it that we have experienced through the past year?' You'd only be blind not to have seen these incidents of racism as well as this whole topical issue of the Scorpions," he said.

Another participant told the Sunday Times: "He [Zuma] was saying the Scorpions are accountable to Parliament, that the role of oversight is also to say to state organs: ‘what are you doing?' and to indicate how you arrived at particular conclusions."

Goniwe said that after the upcoming trial, the Scorpions would be called to account for the management of their investigation into 40 serving and former MPs on charges of defrauding Parliament.

He said the timing of key events pointed to a deliberate campaign to embarrass and undermine Parliament.

"You can't have it that the institution that is supposed to oversee every institution in the country, including the Scorpions, is the very institution that must now try to run away from the Scorpions," he told a news conference on Thursday.

"Where can you have such a thing. It cannot be allowed. So we need to call those people to Parliament and find out what is this circus about. And it must be stopped. It must be stopped."

A Scorpions investigator said yesterday that the unit preferred not to respond to Goniwe's statement because it was an open secret that Parliament itself requested the Scorpions to investigate the matter.

Goniwe said yesterday that the separate racism inquiry would be conducted before a special ad hoc parliamentary committee.

"I see it as an urgent issue. We have to look at the state organs as well and see to what extent [they] have achieved representivity in the defence force and the police."

Organisations and individuals would be invited to give evidence about their experience of race relations in the past decade.

•Jeanne Van der Merwe, meanwhile, reports that travel scam accused Graham Geduldt traded insults with liquidators in the Cape High Court this week as he fought off a demand for R335000 in unpaid debts.

Geduldt, who owns Star Travel Agency, which was implicated in the scam, slammed liquidator Eileen Fey and Southern Sun attorney Bernard Kurz as an "unholy alliance", and refused to hand over audited figures of his bank account. Fey claims Geduldt had used the money to pay off debt.

With acknowledgements to Brendan Boyle and the Sunday Times.