15 April 2003

The government will not impose a "wealth tax" on local business and industry for benefiting from apartheid laws, as recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in its final report.

Responding to the TRC recommendations in Cape Town on Tuesday, President Thabo Mbeki said government did not believe that it would be correct to impose a "wealth tax" on local corporations.

However, Mbeki said that business, just like any other sector of the population, had a role to play in reconstructing the country and should contribute to the reparations fund that would be managed by government and representatives from business.

The President’s response to the TRC report followed his receipt of the final two-volume report last month. The first five-volume report was handed to former President Nelson Mandela in 1998. The TRC was set up in 1995 to investigate human rights violations and atrocities committed during the apartheid years.

Mbeki explained that government believed partnership between business and all South Africans was crucial to fight poverty and empower blacks.

"In this context, we must emphasise that our response to the TRC has to be integrated within the totality of the enormous effort in which we are engaged, to ensure the fundamental social transformation of our country", Mbeki said.

"Consultations are continuing with the business community to examine additional ways in which they can contribute to the task of the reconstruction and development of our society, proceeding from the premise that this is in their own self-interest."

In addition to intensifying work regarding tasks such as poverty eradication and black economic empowerment, encouraging social responsibility projects, and implementing equity legislation and the skills training levy, Mbeki said government intended to improve the work of the Business Trust.

Meanwhile, government has welcomed the TRC recommendation that it declare a national day of prayer and traditional sacrifice to pay tribute to those who lost their lives and/or suffered under apartheid.

"This is consistent with and would be an appropriate response to the proposals made by the TRC for conferences to heal the memory and honour those who were executed", Mbeki said.

"The government accepts this suggestion, and will consult as widely as possible to determine the date and form of such prayer and traditional sacrifice."

Source: BuaNews

	TRC chair Desmond Tutu and committee member Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela at the TRC hearings (Photo: Iris Films)

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Poet Antjie Krog headed the SABC team covering the TRC hearings. The multiple award-winning Country of My Skull is more the work of a poet than a reporter: a riveting mixture of transcript, storytelling, poetry and commentary. A documentary on the TRC hearings, Long Night's Journey Into Day won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary in 2000. Directed by Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffman, the film was shot over two-and-a-half years and features interviews with the surviving families in four notorious cases - the Amy Biehl story, the Cradock Four, the Magoo's Bar bombing and the Guguletu Seven. The Apartheid Museum Johannesburg's Apartheid Museum, assembled by a multi-disciplinary team of architects, curators, film-makers, historians and designers, takes the visitor on a powerful emotional journey into South Africa's past, bringing to life the story of a state-sanctioned system based solely on racial discrimination.