South Africa's last apartheid president, Mr F. W. de Klerk, urged President Thabo Mbeki yesterday to do more to unite the country, tackle crime and create a better investment image.
Mr De Klerk accused Mr Mbeki's governing African National Congress of not doing enough to foster a feeling of unity among the country's race groups, kept apart by Mr De Klerk's National Party for decades by legally enforced separation known as apartheid.
A decade ago Mr De Klerk lifted the ban on 36 black groups, including the ANC, and released Mr Nelson Mandela from 27 years' imprisonment in a move that heralded the end of white minority rule.
"Ten years after February 2nd, 1990, we are running the risk of reverting to a de facto system of ethnically defined government where cultural groups feel threatened and excluded," Mr De Klerk told a forum of journalists.
He said crime, unemployment, corruption, poor service delivery and the consolidation of power in the ruling party were scaring off local and international investment.
"A lot of these problems are a cause for concern for all South Africans, black and white, rich and poor," he said.
"It undermines confidence inside and outside South Africa, it undermines good relations and stems new investment and tourism and threatens all the nice things that have been achieved.
"We have made a good start, a sound base for a peaceful and successful future has been laid. We are moving in the right direction in all key sectors but there is a dark cloud hanging over our land and its people," he said.
The economic team put together by Mr Mandela and retained by Mr Mbeki has won praise internationally for its adherence to unpopular macro-economic policies designed to attract investment and open markets protected by apartheid to global competition.
High levels of poverty and the large gap between the rich and the poor have been blamed for the country's soaring crime rate.
Mr De Klerk and Mr Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Since retiring in 1997, Mr De Klerk has set up a foundation to further reconciliation between South Africans.