Government is digging itself deeper into the mire over its arms deal, and in the process damaging race relations, good governance, and the credibility of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad).

In branding critics of the deal and the editing of reports about it as racists, President Thabo Mbeki overlooks the fact that some of the earliest suspicions were voiced by the auditor-general and the parliamentary standing committee on public accounts (Scopa).

Although Scopa was chaired by Dr Gavin Woods of the Inkatha Freedom Party, it was dominated by the African National Congress (ANC) as the largest party in Parliament.

In his recent "letter from the president" (ANC Today, May 30) Mbeki also says the allegedly racist critics seek to "entrench the stereotype of a corrupt African government".

However, it was the president himself and some of his ministers who early on portrayed Scopa as having made allegations of criminal conduct by government, which Scopa did not do.

Ministerial misrepresentation of the Scopa report was bizarre: government exaggerated the seriousness of what it might be guilty of.

The intention was presumably to portray itself as the injured party, preparing the ground for the subsequent emasculation of Scopa and in the process destroying executive accountability to Parliament for what ministers do with taxpayers' money.

Mbeki's letter is not the first time he has labelled arms deal critics as racists. He spoke in much the same vein in November 2001. He has in fact played the race card in all three of his government's most serious failings politically.

Three years ago he suggested that critics of his conciliatory approach towards President Robert Mugabe were motivated by racial prejudice. In March last year he said critics of the Commonwealth's failure to suspend Zimbabwe were inspired by "white supremacy" although, despite Mbeki's remarks, the Commonwealth has not divided on racial lines about Zimbabwe.

Mbeki also put a racial gloss upon AIDS. In a lecture at the University of Fort Hare in October 2001, he implied that those demanding antiretrovirals had a view of Africans as "germ carriers of a lower order that cannot subject its passions to reason". Africans were further viewed as "a depraved and diseased people" who had to be saved from "perishing from self-inflicted disease".

There is no doubt some truth in some of what Mbeki says. Apartheid certainly did reinforce racial stereotypes, some of which linger on. But, in seeking to dismiss his critics as racist, Mbeki is guilty of stereotypical thinking himself.

Moreover, his persistent mishandling of the questions arising from the arms deal will reinforce the fear that SA will in the end become as corrupt as many other countries on the continent. It is his government's own behaviour, rather than that of its critics, that is likely to entrench the "the stereotype of a corrupt African government".

This stereotype is something Nepad was designed to counteract. Branding people who want a proper probe of the arms deal as racist is the opposite of the good governance without which all the ideals of Nepad will simply evaporate.

The president also undermines the conciliatory things he has himself said about race.

Two years ago, when a black teenager, Tshepo Matlhoga, was murdered by white thugs in Limpopo province, he went out of his way to warn against racial stereotyping. In June last year he denounced the "kill the farmer, kill the boer" slogan. At the ANC's conference in Stellenbosch in December, he spoke of the mutual dependence of blacks and whites in solving the country's problems.

What the arms deal, AIDS, and Zimbabwe have in common is that government's position is indefensible.

Unable to win the public debate, it hits out with abuse. In so doing it merely compounds the damage its mishandling of these three issues has already done to the country.

Kane-Berman is CE of the SA Institute of Race Relations.

With acknowledgements to Kane-Berman and the Business Day.