Thursday, October 29, 1998 Published at 16:43 GMT
Truth report accuses leading figures
Blacked out: A section of report dealing with FW de Klerk
Click here for the Truth Commission's full report
The long-awaited report by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission into abuses under apartheid has accused leading figures from across the political spectrum of human rights violations.
The ruling African National Congress is also blamed.
But it is the system of apartheid, condemned as a crime against humanity, which receives the harshest criticism from the TRC's report, which was published on Thursday.
"This entailed, among other actions, the unlawful killing, within and beyond South Africa, of people whom they perceived as posing a significant challenge to the state's authority."
The existence of such a scheme, the report says, "supports the notion that the apartheid system was a crime against humanity."
The report also holds the ANC responsible for deaths and injuries during its time as an exiled movement fighting apartheid.
Archbishop Tutu predicted that many would be upset by the report.
"Some have sought to discredit it pre-emptively," the bishop said. "It won't change the fact that they have killed... bombed... and tortured their own people. Those are not inventions by this commission."
'A way to heal'
"Fellow South Africans, accept this report as a way - an indispensible way - to heal," Archbishop Tutu concluded before presenting the report to President Mandela.
The president stumbled momentarily under the weight of the volumes as they were handed over.
"The wounds of the period of repression and resistance are too deep to have been healed by the TRC alone," Mr Mandela said. "We are extricating oursleves from a system which that insulted our common humnaity by dividing us from one another on the basis of race."
The ANC, concerned over condemnation of its activities while in exile, failed in a last-minute attempt to delay publication of the report.
South African Deputy President and ANC President Thabo Mbeki criticised the commission for not heeding the ANC's objections to the report.
"This does not help the process for which the TRC was established," Mr Mbeki told reporters.
Earlier in the week, Mr de Klerk won a temporary interdict preventing the publication of material linking him to state-sponsored bombings in the 1980s.
Sections of the TRC document, which suggest that Mr de Klerk knew about the bombing plans but failed to report them, have been suppressed until the case is heard again in March.
Thousands have testifed
The commission was established with multi-party approval in 1995 to investigate crimes committed during the apartheid era, with the aim of providing "as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights".
It has heard testimony from over 21,000 victims of apartheid.
The commission completed its work on 31 July 1998, except for ongoing amnesty investigations, which will continue until next June.