Jeremy Vine: ANC legal action could turn ceremony into a farce

The Truth commission's report is due to be presented to President Nelson Mandela on Thursday.

The application follows a similar bid by former President FW de Klerk, who won a temporary order barring the TRC from publishing accusations against him.

The commission is to publish its report with accusations against Mr de Klerk removed.

ANC spokesman Thabo Masebe said the High Court application would be heard later on Wednesday: "It's going ahead tonight. Our lawyers are preparing the papers."

Mr Masebe acknowledged that the party was trying to achieve the same concessions as De Klerk, whose case will be heard again in March.

Earlier this week it was revealed that the report contains details of torture and unnecessary killings carried out by the ANC while it was an exiled opposition movement, although the bulk of the TRC's criticism is reserved for members and agents of the apartheid government.

It is also believed to link Mr de Klerk, the last president before the end of apartheid, to the bombing of anti-apartheid offices in the 1980s.

Commission chairman Bishop Desmond Tutu said the commission needed time to prepare to fight the legal challenge from Mr de Klerk, and would "excise" the former leader's name from the report to avoid delaying its release.

"It upsets me deeply," Bishop Tutu said. "We have been scrupulously fair to Mr de Klerk and we reject the contention that we have been engaged in a vendetta against him."

The TRC has promised to fight Mr de Klerk's case, and if it wins the case will publish the sections it was forced to delete from the report.

Mr de Klerk, a cabinet minister at the time of the bombings, is not accused of authorising them.

But according to the South African Sunday Times newspaper, the TRC report maintains that Mr de Klerk knew of the involvement of the then Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok and the then Police Commissioner Johan van der Merwe in the bombings, but failed to report them.

Mr Vlok subsequently applied to the TRC for amnesty.

Two-year investigation

The commission, a non-party political body, has spent more than two years hearing testimony concerning abuses of human rights in South Africa during the apartheid years.

The TRC report may include recommendations of further legal action against people believed to have played a central role in abuses.

Mr de Klerk, who was a member of President PW Botha's cabinet at the time of the bombings, has repeatedly denied that he was party to the killing of apartheid's enemies.

Parties 'could reject report'

Earlier on Wednesday, the ANC issued a rebuttal of the TRC accusations.

And commentators in South Africa say at least three other parties are expected to reject the TRC report altogether:

• National Party, which formed South Africa's apartheid government

• Inkatha Freedom Party, the Zulu nationalist organisation which was linked to covert police activities in the early 1990s

• Freedom Front, a white right-wing organisation formed in the dying days of apartheid by former armed forces chief Constand Viljoen.

'Leading figures warned'

The Sunday Times reported that around 200 high-profile figures had been warned by the TRC to expect damaging allegations against them. People said to have received warnings include:

• FW de Klerk, former president

• Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of the president, whose bodyguards have been linked to abduction and killings

• Magnus Malan, formerly head of South Africa's armed forces and later defence minister in PW Botha's cabinet

• Ronnie Kasrils, former officer in the ANC's armed wing uMkhontho weSizwe and now deputy defence minister