Mbeki 'unaware of plaque error'

2008-03-31 20:21

East London - President Thabo Mbeki had no prior knowledge of a glaring spelling error on a memorial plaque for struggle heroes he unveiled in the Eastern Cape last week.

Mike Basopu, co-ordinator of the Duncan Village steering committee who helped with the design the memorial, said on Monday Mbeki was not told the word "unveiled" was spelt incorrectly.

"He was not aware of it. Why are you people talking about this? You are not the first to call... no, he didn't know."

The plaque reads in part: "This memorial was unveilled by the South African President ... "

The quotation marks at the end of the sentence were also the wrong way around, the Daily Sun reported.

The memorial was unveiled on March 28 to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the killing of 30 people in clashes with apartheid police in the village in 1985.

Granite company blamed

Basopu would not be drawn on the president's reaction to seeing the plaque.

Presidential spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga said he was not aware of whether the president knew about the errors and referred queries to the organisers.

The paper reported that mistakes were also made in the spelling of some of the names of those to whom the plaque was dedicated.

This was confirmed by Basopu, who said the organisers had been aware of the mistakes but there had not been enough to correct them before the unveiling.

He said all the mistakes had been identified.

"We have identified the errors and they will be corrected."

Basopu blamed the service provider, a granite company, for the errors.

- SAPA