The long-awaited report by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission into abuses under apartheid has accused leading figures from across the political spectrum of human rights violations.

Former President PW Botha, Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and Winnie Mandela are among those who stand accused.

The ruling African National Congress is also blamed.

But it is the system of apartheid, condemned as a crime against humanity, which receives the harshest criticism from the TRC's report, which was published on Thursday.

• Mr Botha, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1984, and president until 1989, was fined earlier this year after refusing to testify before the commission. The report holds him accountable for killings during his time in office, a period when anti-apartheid resistance was met with increasingly brutal suppression.

• Mr Buthelezi is held responsible for killings carried out by members of his Inkatha Freedom Party. The Zulu nationalist grouping was revealed in 1992 to have collaborated in secret police activity, including mass killings, in the KwaZulu-Natal region.

• Ms Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of the president, is judged by the report to have been implicated in murders, and was said to have allowed her home to be used as a place for assault and mutilation. She has already been convicted of the kidnapping of young activist Stompie Sepei in the late 1980s. Her personal bodyguards have been linked to killings and abductions.

Apartheid accused

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The report speaks of the strategy developed by senior politicians, and police intelligence and defence force leaders - to deal with government opponents.

"This entailed, among other actions, the unlawful killing, within and beyond South Africa, of people whom they perceived as posing a significant challenge to the state's authority."

The existence of such a scheme, the report says, "supports the notion that the apartheid system was a crime against humanity."

The report also holds the ANC responsible for deaths and injuries during its time as an exiled movement fighting apartheid.

Desmond Tutu: The commission's driving force

The 3,500-page report was presented to President Mandela on Thursday by commission chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Archbishop Tutu predicted that many would be upset by the report.

"Some have sought to discredit it pre-emptively," the bishop said. "It won't change the fact that they have killed... bombed... and tortured their own people. Those are not inventions by this commission."

'A way to heal'

"Fellow South Africans, accept this report as a way - an indispensible way - to heal," Archbishop Tutu concluded before presenting the report to President Mandela.

The president stumbled momentarily under the weight of the volumes as they were handed over.

Accepting the report, Mr Mandela said although it was imperfect, it would help reconciliation following the apartheid era.

"The wounds of the period of repression and resistance are too deep to have been healed by the TRC alone," Mr Mandela said. "We are extricating oursleves from a system which that insulted our common humnaity by dividing us from one another on the basis of race."

Legal challenges

The sound of reconciliation

The handing over of the report was overshadowed by two controversial legal bids to delay publication - the first by former President FW de Klerk, and the second by the ANC.

The ANC, concerned over condemnation of its activities while in exile, failed in a last-minute attempt to delay publication of the report.

South African Deputy President and ANC President Thabo Mbeki criticised the commission for not heeding the ANC's objections to the report.

"This does not help the process for which the TRC was established," Mr Mbeki told reporters.

Earlier in the week, Mr de Klerk won a temporary interdict preventing the publication of material linking him to state-sponsored bombings in the 1980s.

Sections of the TRC document, which suggest that Mr de Klerk knew about the bombing plans but failed to report them, have been suppressed until the case is heard again in March.

Thousands have testifed

The TRC spent two-and-a-half years compiling a dossier of human rights violations committed by all sides during the time of apartheid.

The commission was established with multi-party approval in 1995 to investigate crimes committed during the apartheid era, with the aim of providing "as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights".

It has heard testimony from over 21,000 victims of apartheid.