Dear Judge Hefer,

Thank you very much for the Report of the Hefer Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of Spying Against the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr B.T. Ngcuka. The Minister of Justice gave me the report four days ago.

I would also like to thank you most sincerely for acceding to my request to conduct the inquiry, despite the short notice we gave you. I must also express my deep appreciation for the expedition and thoroughness with which you carried it out.

I fully accept the Main Findings you arrived at in response to the terms of reference of the Hefer Commission.

I have directed that the Report should be made public with immediate effect.

I would also like to comment on some of the issues you raise in the Report. Obviously, I am not asking that you do anything about these. Rather, they indicate some of the things we will have to do to respond to your observations.

We will seek legal opinion to determine whether the government needs to do anything to avoid a possible repetition in future of the problem that arose when you sought access to documents held by the state intelligence agencies.

This seems necessary in the light of the observations you make that the refusal to grant you access to these documents created an "insufferable" situation and might have had to be resolved by the courts.

I have also noted your observation that the person(s) responsible for the "leak" which led to the complaint lodged by Mr Maharaj has/have as yet not been identified. I agree with you "such a state of affairs cannot be tolerated". We will therefore follow up this matter.

I note that attorneys representing Ms Patricia De Lille MP, wrote to you to say "she is unfortunately not in a position to assist the commission in any manner with matters relevant to (the Commission's) terms of reference..."

I trust that the National Assembly will follow up this matter, since she made the spying allegations against Minister Maduna and, other Ministers, in the Assembly. I have been very concerned about her allegations ever since she made them, especially because they related to serving Ministers of State.

I also fully agree with you that "anyt