As South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) enters its final phase, the chances of it submitting a unanimous report to President Nelson Mandela on schedule - October 31st - are slim. The commission finishes its public hearings tomorrow. A report in Business Day newspaper talks of a fundamental divergence of opinion between 14 of the commissioners and the 15th, Mr Wynand Malan, over whether to categorise apartheid as a "crime against humanity," as the UN General Assembly did 25 years ago.
Mr Malan is a former member of the National Party who resigned in the 1980s in protest against its failure to reform itself quickly or radically enough. His endorsement of the majority report is symbolically important to the TRC, as he is an Afrikaner and a man who does not fit the pro-liberation profile of nearly all the original 17 commissioners.
His approval is doubly important because of the resignation of Commissioner Chris de Jager, another Afrikaner, in protest against what he saw as the TRC's biased approach in its quest to uncover "the truth" about the past. Mr Malan has declined to comment on reports that he does not agree with the majority view. But he is on record in an interview with the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld as disagreeing with the view that apartheid is a crime against humanity comparable with Nazism.
His statement contrasts pointedly with President Nelson Mandela's observation, made in a speech to the UN five years ago, that apartheid is the only political system to be defined as a crime against humanity since Nazism was so labelled.
Reports of the inability of TRC commissioners to reach consensus on how to label apartheid coincide with the publication of the results of a survey on TRC's work by Market Research Africa. It shows that nearly two-thirds of South Africans believe that the TRC's investigation of the past has led to a deterioration in race relations. Though South Africans of all colours hold that view, it is particularly prevalent in the Indian (74 per cent) and white (72 per cent) communities.
These findings are partially confirmed by those of an earlier survey conducted by a different company, MarkData: it found that a majority of whites, coloureds and Indians believe that the TRC is biased and unfair and that a substantial minority of blacks - about a third - do not endorse the majority black view that the TRC has been fair and unbiased.
The TRC chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has vigorously defended the commission against charges of bias, pointing out that the TRC conducted a nine-day hearing into allegations of serious human rights abuse against Ms Winnie Mandikizela-Mandela, president of the ANC Women's League and a member of the ANC's national executive.
If the TRC had conducted a similar hearing into allegations against an Afrikaner leader, "there would have been hell to pay," Archbishop Tutu said.
He added that the TRC "bent over backwards" in its bid to accommodate former president P. W. Botha, under whose presidency many of the worst atrocities against "enemies of the state" were committed by security forces.
Opinion is deeply divided over whether the TRC has reconciled or further divided a nation torn by decades of white domination.
"The Truth Commission has ended up with a more polarised country. I and my people feel totally alienated from the new South Africa," the former apartheid defence chief, Mr Constand Viljoen, leader of the Afrikaner Freedom Front, said.
"Reconciliation. That is where the Truth Commission has failed," said Mr Marthinus van Schalkwijk, leader of the National Party, which imposed apartheid for 45 years. "The people of South Africa are now further apart than when the Truth Commission started."
Most of the evidence from the 2,500 people chosen from among 21,000 victims of gross human rights violations pointed to atrocities committed by or on behalf of whites.