Former Transport Minister Mac Maharaj has backed a newspaper report suggesting Bulelani Ngcuka, the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), was a probable informant for the South African government during the Apartheid era, SABC television news reported.

Maharaj, who was part of the African National Congress's intelligence network at the time, said it is possible that the state archives were not properly accessed and that President Thabo Mbeki was not correctly briefed when he appointed Ngcuka.

Meanwhile, the NDPP said it would take legal action against City Press newspaper for publishing a report that Ngcuka, was named in a report as an apartheid police agent.

"We will take legal action against City Press because we warned the paper not to publish anything that is a lie, so they must be prepared to pay," NDPP spokesman Sipho Ngwema said.

The newspaper reported that Ngcuka was investigated by the exiled African National Congress in the late 1980s to establish whether he was an apartheid spy.

Documents leaked to City Press this week by a senior investigative journalist, which are said to have been sourced from a National Intelligence database, identify the head of the NDPP as possibly, but not conclusively, an apartheid police spy, Agent RS452, the newspaper reported.

Ngwema said the people who planted the information with the newspaper were desperate, had no integrity, had no honour and no conscience.

"They thought because of their ability to manufacture lies, they think they will be untouchable. This time they will not get away with it," he said.

Ngcuka has denied the charges against him.

With acknowledgements to Sapa and the Business Day.