Spy charges 'worse than apartheid'
By Charlayne Hunter-Gault
CNN Johannesburg Bureau Chief
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Ngcuka said he was attacked because of the investigation he was conducting.
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 The people behind all of this campaign ... were the people I would have put my life down for during the struggle. 
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-- Bulelani Ngcuka
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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- South Africa's chief prosecutor has said the fight against apartheid was easier than his recent battle to clear his name of allegations he was pre-1994 government spy.
In his first interview since being cleared, Bulelani Ngcuka told CNN claims he had been an apartheid-era agent had had a "devastating" effect on his family.
Ngcuka, South Africa's director of public prosecutions, spoke of his relief the ordeal was over. "There's never been any doubts in my mind because I knew the allegations were false. There was absolutely no substance to them."
He told CNN's Johannesburg Bureau Chief Charlayne Hunter-Gault Wednesday the whole experience was "traumatic -- not just to me, to my family, to my friends ... but most importantly to my organization.
"People in the office were badly affected by it ... asking themselves could it be true we are working with a traitor."
Ngcuka said he suffered during the struggle against South Africa's official government policy of racial segregation but that period of his life was easy compared to the recent past.
"It was easy in the sense that we were fighting a people who were evil, an apartheid system that we understood.
"This was difficult because the people behind all of this campaign had been my own comrades... people I would have put my life down for during the struggle."
A senior judge appointed by President Thabo Mbeki last September to look into the charges declared on Tuesday that they were without foundation.
"Ngcuka probably never acted as an agent for a pre-1994 government security service," J.J.F. Hefer wrote in a 62-page report. Ngcuka repeatedly denied all the charges against him.
In the report, Hefer said the testimony of Ngcuka's two accusers -- former Transport Minister Mac Maharaj and former ANC intelligence agent Moe Shaik -- was "most unconvincing," "ill conceived" and "entirely unsubstantiated." (Full story)
The allegations against Ngcuka arose as the prosecutor and his elite crime-busting unit, the Scorpions, were conducting an investigation into two contracts awarded while Maharaj was still minister of transport.
The report concludes a saga that has gripped South Africa for months, beginning with the leaking to the media of an internal ANC investigation dating back to the late 1980s naming Ngcuka as a possible spy, code-named RS452.
Shaik eventually admitted he had resurrected the document after Ngcuka accused ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma of accepting bribes in a 1999 arms deal worth billions of rands (dollars).
Ngcuka did not prosecute Zuma, saying he did not have a strong enough case against him. But he brought charges against Zuma's financial adviser and confidante Schabir Shaik, Moe's brother.
The prosecutor told CNN he was convinced the motive behind the attack on him was "self-interest" and that Maharaj and Shaik were "trying to divert attention away from our investigation" of them.
"This was not just an attack on me. It was an attack on an institution supporting democracy," Ngcuka added.
