Mkhize said there was no provision in the ANC constitution for Cele to "rock up and say, 'I am no longer police chief, so I want my NEC position back'."

He said it was common cause that the ANC has not begun discussing the composition of the leadership to be elected in Mangaung in December.

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that Cele might be thrown a lifeline by the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal and that he had met a number of ANC heavyweights in the province to discuss the possibility of returning to the NEC if he were fired.

Mkhize said such a discussion could not have taken place because Cele was barred from occupying any position in the leadership of a political organisation.

"This is why he had to resign his NEC position when he was appointed police chief in 2009," he said.

President Jacob Zuma is sitting on a 114-page report by the commission he appointed to investigate Cele's dodgy leases. The report is believed to recommend that Cele be fired and a criminal investigation be started into the irregular awarding of leases worth R1.7-billion in Pretoria and Durban.

Cele is going to court to challenge the findings of the commission, led by Judge Jake Moloi, saying the report is littered with "blatant errors" and fails to deal with his primary duty of fighting crime.

Mkhize said the commission's failure to deal with the question of Cele's fitness to perform his duties was sufficient basis for a court to rule that the commission did not properly apply its mind to the task given to it by Zuma.

"The second basis for General Cele's challenge speaks to something altogether more sinister than incompetence. Some errors suggest nothing less than deliberate intent to pervert the record of the evidence placed before the [commission] for the sole purpose of propping up totally unwarranted and misleading conclusions against him," he said.