Hearings into the role of business during the apartheid era ended dramatically yesterday with a leader of South Africa's largest trade union federation accusing business notables of "lying" in their submissions to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
"They are lying through their teeth," Mr Sam Shilowa, secretary-general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, told the TRC in an address which served as backdrop to a presentation by South Africa's largest corporation, Anglo-American.
Dealing with Anglo-American's assertion that it was in favour of trade union rights for black workers, Mr Shilowa recalled the massive strike by black miners a decade ago and the dismissal of "40,000" striking workers by Anglo-American.
He pointed out that in 1988, after the then government imposed crippling restrictions on the trade union federation in an attempt to halt the black rebellion sweeping across the country, union leaders approached progressive business notables to see if they would help to persuade the authorities to rescind the restrictions. Their answer was "No," Mr Shilowa recorded.
Denying that Anglo-American benefited from a close association with the National Party government, Anglo-American chairman Mr Julian Ogilvie Thompson insisted that the then government hated the corporation because it criticised government policies in private and in public.
Another top Anglo-American man, Mr Bobby Godsell, who heads its huge gold-mining division, told the TRC that during the 13 years when Mr B.J. Vorster was South Africa's prime minister, he and the then Anglo-American chairman, Mr Harry Oppenheimer, never met, never even had a telephone conversation and exchanged letters only once.
Mr Godsell argued that the lack of contact between Vorster and Mr Oppenheimer spoke volumes about the unfriendly relations between the then government and Anglo-American.