Suspended deputy prosecutions boss Nomgcobo Jiba told the Mokgoro inquiry that there was no way she could have saved former president Jacob Zuma after he granted her husband a presidential pardon.

Her husband, former lawyer and former Scorpions member Booker Nhantsi stole R193 000, which belonged to a client, from his trust fund in 2003.

At the inquiry on Monday, evidence leader Nazreen Bawa, SC, asked how it was that former president Jacob Zuma granted Jiba's husband a pardon the same day she was purported to have been in Durban on September 9, 2010.

Jiba denied that she was in Durban on the day.

In 2017, author Jacques Pauw revealed in his book , The President's Keepers,  that Jiba allegedly flew from Johannesburg to Durban in 2010 at the expense of the Crime Intelligence secret fund.

The Mokgoro inquiry has been tasked with establishing whether Jiba and special director of public prosecutions Lawrence Mrwebi are fit for office

President Cyril Ramaphosa instituted the inquiry and in a letter to Jiba and Mrwebi he said: "I have taken into account the serious nature of allegations that you are unfit to be in so high an office, where the work of our criminal justice system is central to the critical and pressing matter of all prosecutions, especially prosecution of corruption cases and safeguard of our public purse.

"You hold a senior position with influence over a large swathe of the NPA. It is the interest of the NPA’s image as a whole that I consider here, and of the integrity of an enquiry (sic) that must result in the clearest and most convincing conclusions about the integrity, and sound leadership of the NPA."

The inquiry continues on Wednesday.