The contrast is stark: R660m for apartheid victims, but R66bn for the arms deal!

The message from President Thabo Mbeki's address to Parliament on the truth commission report is: we do not care about the 65% of South Africans who are impoverished because of apartheid. We, the ANC, do not care because we are now in bed with big business.

It was also noted that the president attended the function after the commission's report was presented in the company of Anglo American's Michael Spicer, and then left the function with him.

Your article, Mbeki pans apartheid lawsuits (April 16), reflects the extraordinarily short-sighted bluster from Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin that government is "opposed to and contemptuous of the litigation".

As Dumisa Ntsebeza comments: "Reparations will aid reconstruction."

Big business siphoned an estimated R1-trillion out of SA.

Repatriation of those SA assets would dramatically transform the country's economic prospects to the benefit of us all including the business community.

With acknowledgements to Terry Crawford-Browne and the Business Day.