Archbishop Desmond Tutu published a searing attack on South Africa's former white leaders yesterday, saying most had lied to his post-apartheid truth commission.
"True reconciliation cannot be based on lies," he said in an article published in Johannesburg's the Star newspaper.
Dr Tutu, chairman of a statutory Truth and Reconciliation Commission which ended a two-year investigation into apartheid's human rights record on Friday, said whites had not matched the willingness of their black victims to forgive.
"My dear white compatriots. . . you have been let down by most of your leaders, who have made you out to be too mean-spirited to respond to the incredible magnanimity and generosity of the victims," he said.
Dr Tutu, former head of the Anglican Church in southern Africa and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said the commission had done well but could have done better to heal the wounds of apartheid, which ended in 1994.
The few former ministers who had agreed to appear before the commission had hidden behind lies or qualified admissions of limited guilt, he said.
In an clear reference to former President F.W. de Klerk, who repudiated apartheid and led South Africa towards democracy, Dr Tutu said those who had known about illegal acts and done nothing to expose them had condoned those actions.
He cited the police bombing of the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches. Mr De Klerk first denied knowledge of the bombing but later, after being named by another commission witness, said he had known about it but not sanctioned it.
Mr De Klerk told the commission he had never, during five years as president, sanctioned an illegal action but later conceded that he had become aware of some illegal activities after they occurred.
Dr Tutu said this was not enough, urging South Africa's whites, who are outnumbered five to one by blacks: "Please grasp this opportunity - or do you really agree with those leaders and do you want us to degenerate into a Bosnia, a Rwanda, a Northern Ireland?"