Koos Kombuis is an Afrikaans-speaking white South African "liberal" and a well-known musician and writer in South Africa.

I'm posting his open letter to President Thabo Mbeki because it puts into words a growing unease many South Africans both at home and abroad feel about the rhetoric coming from the SA government, and in particular expressed by President Mbeki in his weekly "Letter from the President".

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President Thabo Mbeki, allow me to address you in an open letter. Despite my growing animosity towards your personal philosophies, I have been able to handle almost everything you have said and written as president. Until you (or one of your cronies) claimed, on the African National Congress website, that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is the icon of white people.

This ridiculous statement came a few weeks after Tutu warned you that you are creating a generation of yes-men in the ANC, and that you don’t care enough for the poor.

Tutu never once said anything about whites; he was concerned about poor people.

If there is one utterly non-racial person in this country, who makes no distinction between black and white, it is Tutu. You may be unaware of this, but up to this day, this is the reason many conservative Afrikaners still hate him.

His white support comes mainly from liberals, ex-activists and people who are genuinely interested in reconciliation.

What are you guys going to claim next? That Nelson Mandela is an honourary white?

By attacking white liberals, you are alienating hordes of potential supporters. You are ignoring the contributions of many who protested; suffered; toiled side by side with the ANC masses for a free South Africa.

By attacking white liberals, you paint a dark picture of the “African renaissance” as a building without windows, a club reserved exclusively for certain blacks. You are promoting a way of thinking that could pave the way for increased polarisation and even officially sanctioned ethnic cleansing. You are making enemies of exactly the same people who were enemies of the old National Party, and for exactly the same reasons.

Of course, not all white liberals are sincere. There are those among us who are naive, who think they “love blacks” when they actually patronise blacks, who have a paint-by-numbers vision of how the rainbow nation is supposed to work.

But if you do away with an entire diverse group of people in one sweeping statement, you also destroy the philosophical basis of liberalism. You discard huge and noble concepts such as humanism, glasnost, and tolerance.

At a dangerous time like the present, when previously-enlightened countries like the United States, France, The Netherlands and Britain are slowly sliding towards fascism, should we allow the last few pockets of goodwill to be eroded? If South Africa becomes as divided, how are we going to point the way back from the abyss? If we can’t be a shining example to stop mankind in its tracks, to make people pause and think, to encourage nations to pursue peace, who will?

You have a choice: you can either become the great statesman and international hero you already think you are, or you can retire and simply become an author, like me, or Jeffrey Archer.

If you choose the first course of action, I will be very glad. My children will also be very glad. There will be hope for this country, this continent, this world.

Mr President, you have a golden opportunity to start talking sense. Mind the gap.

Koos Kombuis

The above is an edited version of the letter, published in the press. A longer version of the letter can be found here.

For the record I would like to note that I have nothing personal against President Mbeki, all in all he has been a good leader, if somewhat inclined to neo-liberal policies. So far democracy and free speech have seemed safe in his hands. It for this reason that I find his personal attacks and disparaging remarks about Desmond Tutu disturbing.

In my opinion Tutu is a hero. As a student I attended a speech of his, he did not have an entirely friendly audience. Right-wing students, many of them from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), shouted out racist insults and threats. The secret police were present in large numbers taking photos. It took a great deal of courage to speak out during the apartheid days, and also courage to reach out to "the other side", to us white students.

Desmond Tutu would stand in front of white policemen beating up rioters and say "that's a human being you are beating", and on several occasions risked his life to prevent the dreadful "necklacing" (burning alive) of alleged police informers in black townships. He also chaired the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission, which played an important role in healing post-apartheid South Africa.

Desmond Tutu has perhaps earned Mbeki's wrath by publically questioning the SA government's strange friendliness towards President Mugabe of Zimbabwe (who seems to have become a deranged despot) and the priority the ANC government places on helping the poor. Questions which are, in my opinion, entirely valid. Perhaps Mbeki was not able to justify his policies on the basis of rational arguments, perhaps that is why he resorted to name calling and personal attacks. Whatever the reasons, I think it is pitiful.