DEPUTY President Kgalema Motlanthe says senior politicians should not jump straight from the government to lucrative jobs in the private sector.

During a debate in the National Assembly yesterday, MP Narend Singh of the Inkatha Freedom Party proposed the idea of a 12-month "cooling off period" for senior politicians who left the government.

Motlanthe said he "definitely" agreed.

"Yes, indeed there should be a cooling off period, because it would not be correct of any senior politician to prepare ground and then move outside to collect what they would have prepared while in government," Motlanthe said.

But Motlanthe refused to agree that friends and relatives of politicians should be banned from winning tenders.

He denied the claim by Cope MP Juli Killian that this amounted to "insider trading".

Motlanthe said all South Africans "have the right to take part in the economy of the country without exception".

He said it was unfair to pretend that friends, relatives and acquaintances of people who hold political office had no skills or experience to be in business in their own right.

He proposed that where blood relatives of politicians won government tenders, the public protector would have to see if something untoward had happened or not.

"Undue facilitation must not be allowed, but where people are married and of their own volition succeed, and if they are cleared by the public protector, there should be no insinuations or innuendos," Motlanthe said.