Controversial cabinet spokesman Jimmy Manyi is to be grilled Thursday about revelations that he made racist remarks about Indians a month before laying into coloureds.

The DA yesterday released a sound clip at a media briefing in Cape Town in which Manyi is heard saying "Indians have bargained their way to the top".

This morning, at the second post-cabinet-meeting briefing Manyi will front since being appointed government spokesman, he is likely to be confronted with a barrage of questions from journalists on his allegedly racist utterances.

DA federal chairman Wilmot James said yesterday that Manyi made his remarks about Indians to the Durban Chamber of Commerce on February 20 last year. He was speaking on employment equity legislation in his capacity as director-general of the Department of Labour.

In the sound clip, first broadcast on an SAfm news and current affairs show last year, Manyi is heard saying: "Indians, we should be having only 3% [of management positions]. They are sitting at 5.9%. I call it the power of bargaining. Indians have bargained their way to the top," said Manyi to laughter from his audience.

James said Manyi's remarks could not be simply dismissed as an off-colour joke about Indians' ability to bargain.

"While Mr Manyi's audience can be heard to be laughing, this does not disguise the nature of the remarks," he said.

"It is nothing more than bigotry and prejudice disguised as humour that relies on old racist clichés left over from the apartheid era. James said the joke was the "sexist equivalent of saying that women get to the top because they sleep with men".

"It reinforces and articulates an egregious prejudice: the idea that Indian people are very good at bargaining and what they've done is bargain to the top," he said.

James called on President Jacob Zuma to fire Manyi as government spokesman.

The latest revelation comes soon after an exposé of Manyi's views on Western Cape coloureds.

In a TV interview last year he said coloured people were "over-concentrated" in that province and should look for work elsewhere.

His remarks were quickly posted on the internet.

Government Communications and Information Services deputy CEO Vusi Mona last week said that Manyi, who is his boss, regretted any offence that he might have caused by his remarks. He also communicated Manyi's apology, but Manyi has been slammed for not apologising personally.

Manyi yesterday refused to comment on his remarks about Indians.

ANC spokesman Keith Khoza reiterated that his party distanced itself from "racist statements" attributed to Manyi.

National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel yesterday entered the furore over Manyi's comments about coloured people.

In an "open letter", he accused Manyi of being a racist in the "mould of HF Verwoerd".

Last night, during a briefing to the SA National Editors' Forum in Johannesburg, Manuel said: ''One of the battles we have is the battle of forgetting and the constitution we have today was not something forced down the throat of the liberation movement by the apartheid regime.''

He added that the Freedom Charter ''is a few years older than I am ... but I believe South Africa belongs to all who live in it.

''We will fight for these freedoms side by side. It is important to remind ourselves that the constitutional principles were actually the work of Oliver Tambo.''

In his letter, Manuel also questioned Manyi's role in the freedom struggle.

The Black Management Forum, of which Manyi is president, refused yesterday to provide information on his political and professional background.

Manuel's comments drew a response from the ANC Youth League. Its spokesman, Floyd Shivambu, said the league was "disturbed" by Manuel's letter.

"The ANC Youth League wonders why Trevor Manuel is doing this, because the ANC has spoken and provided guidance on this issue," Shivambu said.

"We now do not know who Trevor Manuel represents, because his remarks fall squarely into the political agenda of right-wing political forces opposed to the ANC."

Despite Khoza's statement, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said that Manuel had acted without the party's backing. ''He does not want our view. If he wanted our view he would have written a letter to us. He went into the open. We won't join the match, we won't get into that mud with him.''

But Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said he agreed that Manyi's statement about an ''over-concentration'' of coloured people in the Western Cape was racist and further comments along this line would call into question his fitness for high office.

''I agree with Manuel. He is right. That remark of Jimmy's was a most unfortunate statement ever to be made in a democracy,'' Vavi said.

At the centre of the storm is the employment equity legislation before parliament, which, if passed in its current form, could force coloured people to leave Western Cape to find a job.

Cosatu's Western Cape secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, said the government should withdraw the legislation. - Additional reporting by Sapa