President Thabo Mbeki should come clean about the cabinet's role in covering up key findings of the arms deal investigation and not try to obfuscate it by resorting to accusations of racism against the media, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said yesterday.

Leon was responding to Mbeki's letter in the ANC Today, which he described as "deplorable in its evasiveness".

In his weekly letter Mbeki accused the media of racism and of perpetuating "an intensely negative, highly offensive and deeply entrenched stereotype of Africans" as being intrinsically corrupt and dishonest.

The president said racists operated from the assumption that an African government was necessarily corrupt until it proved itself otherwise.

Mbeki said Auditor-General Shauket Fakie alleged to have excluded sections of the arms deal report after his meeting with the executive was legally obliged to show his draft reports to the institution being audited.

"The auditor-general is free to accept or reject any comments made by those he has audited," Mbeki said. He could not be accused of corrupt behaviour in doing so, Mbeki said.

But Leon accused Mbeki of trying to create the impression of the government as an innocent victim of "odious racism and misleading accusations".

"President Mbeki denies that there has been any wrongdoing by government and hints that it is the target of a vast conspiracy. Yet it is government's corrupt arms deal that has had a vast impact, marring nearly every single institution of our new democratic order."

Regarding Fakie's role, Leon noted that the differences between the draft and final reports were "staggering and present a clear-cut case that substantive changes were made" .

With acknowledgement to Linda Ensor and Business Day.