David Gleason's column often represents some of Business Day's most incisive business analysis.

However, his poorly informed attack on the national director of public prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka (August 4), does no justice to his cause.

Gleason's thesis is that Ngcuka, vested with "extraordinary" prosecutorial powers, accountable only to Parliament, is involved, with his wife, Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, in a form of Macbeth-like political regicide to dethrone Deputy President Jacob Zuma and install Mlambo-Ngcuka as deputy president.

Gleason describes Minister Mlambo-Ngcuka as "unusually ambitious", while the unfortunate Ngcuka is merely a "cowboy".

The facts, however, are somewhat different. Under the constitution, Ngcuka is, "with due regard to his experience, conscientiousness and integrity", appointed by the state president for a nonrenewable 10-year term (of which he has now served half), which he must exercise "without fear, favour or prejudice".

Far from being an African National Congress backbencher, as claimed by Gleason, Ngcuka chaired the senate's select committee on justice and played a prominent role in the negotiations over the judiciary in the country's final constitution.

Ngcuka displayed an independence of mind, a conspicuous lack of partiality and a desire to do what was right, rather than what was politically expedient.

Although many lawyers (myself included) had grave reservations about the propriety of appointing a former politician to head the national prosecution authority, Ngcuka's record in the prosecution of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Tony Yengeni and in the current investigation of Zuma shows that he remains entirely faithful to his constitutional mandate.

I suggest that, in investigating allegations of corruption against Zuma in what is SA's biggest foreign acquisition, he is merely doing his job.

With acknowledgements to Peter Leon and the Business Day.