The Rt. Rev. Desmond Tutu

Cape Town—South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has said it does not believe Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is either a liar or a charlatan after an angry verbal exchange between the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and South African President Thabo Mbeki.

The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Njongonkulu Ndungane, Tutu’s successor, stepped into the fray on Monday, calling for calm and offering to mediate between the two. Ndungane said it was time for “reducing the temperature”. He said: “I want to encourage the two to meet. They are two distinguished people who mean well for South Africa and we must find a way for them to come together.”

The verbal run in between two of South Africa’s best known opponents of the old apartheid regime has played big in the country’s press, coming soon after the president clashed with the country’s largest trade union alliance, the Council of South Africa trade unions, which is part of the ANC’s tripartite alliance with the South African Communist Party.

In a statement to Tutu - released on Monday - ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said: “Neither the African National Congress nor its president [Mbeki] regards you as ‘a liar with scant regard for the truth’, but we do recognise that even someone like yourself has the capacity to err.” The ANC official added: “We will continue to regard you as a respected leader within our society whose contribution to the life of this country is highly valued.”

Tutu had raised the president’s ire by complaining, among other things, in a lecture made on Friday for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, of the “uncritical, sycophantic, obsequious conformity” in the ANC-led government which he said did not encourage free debate.

The former Anglican leader’s Monday statement followed a response from the president in his regular column on the Internet on Friday responding to Tutu taking on Mbeki’s government on a variety of issues including black economic empowerment (BEE).

For his part Mbeki said to Tutu’s charge that black economic empowerment had largely benefited an elite: “There are some in our country who regularly communicate the entirely false message that black economic empowerment benefits almost exclusively a small elite composed of members of the [ruling] African National Congress.” Mbeki also said: “It is clear that there are some in our country who do not want the truth to be known about what our government and the public sector as a whole are doing to implement broad-based BEE.”

That was followed by Tutu issuing a statement in which he said he would pray for President Mbeki.

The archbishop, who has also been outspoken against African dictators including Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, said: “Thank you Mr President for telling me what you think of me - that I am a liar with scant regard for the truth and a charlatan posing with his concern for the poor, the hungry, the oppressed and the voiceless.”