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12/05/2004:

"Mbeki called me a liar, claims Tutu"

For decades South Africans have known him as the Arch, an affectionate nickname for a towering figure in the liberation struggle.

Yet this weekend Archbishop Desmond Tutu claims he has been branded a liar, charlatan and poser.

The insults flew in a bitter clash between the archbishop and President Thabo Mbeki that exposed intolerance in the ruling African National Congress.

The row has polarised the country. Some called Tutu an out-of-touch cleric parroting white concerns. Others hailed him as a bulwark against creeping authoritarianism in Mbeki's government.

The archbishop triggered the row while giving last week's annual Nelson Mandela Lecture In Johannesburg by criticising its policies on poverty, Aids, Zimbabwe and the enrichment of a new black elite.

'Too many of our people live in gruelling, demeaning, dehumanising poverty. We are sitting on a powder keg,' said Tutu, joint winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

He disagreed with Mbeki's questioning of the link between HIV and Aids and his silence over human rights abuses by Robert Mugabe's regime.

He railed against the policy of 'empowerment', which obliged white-owned companies to transfer shares to black people: 'What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority, but a small elite that tends to be recycled?'

In remarks interpreted as aimed at the president's centralised rule, Tutu said: 'We should not too quickly want to pull rank and to demand an uncritical, sycophantic, obsequious conformity.'
Full Article: guardian.co.uk