DENIS BARNETT, Johannesburg | Sunday 7.00pm.
SHARP contradictions on Sunday undermined the ANC’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s findings that it violated human rights when fighting apartheid, highlighting differences between President Nelson Mandela and his deputy Thabo Mbeki.
Mandela backed the report’s findings, saying that nobody could deny that people died in African National Congress detention camps, despite it waging a “just war” against apartheid. He admitted that he and Mbeki had “a difference of opinion on the matter”, flatly contradicting the leadership of the ANC, which on Saturday issued denials of any rift, two days after seeking in vain to delay publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission TRC report.
In what the Sunday Times described as a damning indictment of the ANC’s decision to seek a court injunction stopping the release, Mandela added: “No doubt if the report had been read, perhaps the response of the ANC would have been totally different.”
The paper said Mandela had exposed a huge gulf between his own view and the official party line that the ANC should not take the blame for abuses detailed in the report, as these occurred while it was involved in a just war against white minority rule and racist segregation.
The leadership of the ruling ANC strongly denied that Mandela and Mbeki differed over the last-ditch court bid. “We happened to respond differently depending on the information we had when we prepared our responses. There’s nothing wrong with having a difference of opinion,” Mandela said on Saturday, according to the Sunday Times.
Mandela told a meeting of community leaders in the diamond-mining centre of Kimberley on Saturday: “It’s not easy for me to be questioned about whether there is a difference of opinion between me and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki on the publishing of the report. “There’s no doubt that Thabo Mbeki had good intentions and may have seen extracts of the report.” — AFP