Two of South Africa's leading independent commissions have come under fire from different quarters. That under Mr Justice Willem Heath which is investigating corruption, has had a less than enthusiastic response from deputy president Mr Thabo Mbeki to its inquiry into mismanagement of funds in the Ministry of Health, while the Human Rights Commission's claims of racism in the media have been vigorously denied by the white-dominated newspaper industry. In a country in which the entire power of the State, including its education system and its public relations resources, were used for so many years to raise racial divisions to the level of a dominant ideology it is hardly surprising that a black against white attitude has persisted.
In the apartheid era the powerful government propaganda machine highlighted whenever possible the negative aspects of those African states in which blacks had attained majority rule. Dictatorship, corruption and lack of human rights - for whites - were stressed almost to the point of indoctrination. Among some sectors of the majority community, years of false accusations and victimisation created a culture in which all criticism from the white minority was not only resented but almost automatically disbelieved. The source of Ms Winnie Mandela's political support, for example, lay largely among politicised youth who refused to believe the charges against her.
Part of the legacy of those years of persecution on the part of the African National Congress (ANC) has been an unflinching solidarity among its members - a loyalty to each other which made it one of the most effective political organisations in the world. But in the new political circumstances which obtain following the arrival of democracy in South Africa the loyalty which once bound the ANC together could serve to alienate many of its supporters.
Mr Mbeki's rejection of the Heath commission's proposed investigation into the alleged squandering by the Ministry of Health of more than £1 million, without proper accounting - on an anti-Aids play - has echoes of his opposition to parts of the report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which attacked the ANC's breaches of human rights in its training camps in the front-line states. President Mandela's defence of the discredited former ANC leader in the western Cape, the Rev Alan Boesak, has also raised eyebrows among many members and supporters.
The accusations by the Human Rights Commission against the media centre on a suggestion that corruption in black circles has been given more prominence that corruption among whites. The country's biggest-selling newspaper, the Sunday Times, has accused the Human Rights Commission of bias, saying it was "neither empowered, nor equipped" to carry out a planned investigation into racism in the media industry. The Black Lawyers Association and the Association of Black Accountants had earlier accused the Sunday Times and the Mail and Guardian, in which the British newspaper the Guardian has a controlling interest, of "subliminal racism " and "violating the rights of black people to equality".
The Mail and Guardian's response, in which it argues that the Human Rights Commission's claims amount to a demand that newspapers ration their coverage of corruption cases on the basis of racial demography, is more of an attack on the commission than a defence against the commission's allegations. That such allegations and counter-allegations can be freely made illustrates that at least some things have changed for the better since the dismantling of the apartheid regime.