"Leadership means more than the articulation of the perceived self-interest of a constituency," he said replying to the debate on his opening of Parliament speech.
"It means avoiding as much as possible the temptation to arouse the base feelings of sections of a society that was, for so long, rent apart."
The whole "hue and cry" about affirmative action which was raised by the NP in debate was "a misplaced perception", the president said.
He repeated that government was striving to ensure training, promotion and fair opportunities to a section of South Africans which had been denied these rights by law.
After years of deliberate neglect and exclusion, any other course of action would be disastrous.
"In any case, the constitution enjoins us to undertake this programme.
"What message, therefore, do we send out as leaders, particularly in the name of constituencies that were all privileged by law, when we characterise these efforts as racism," he asked
In an off-the-cuff remark the president challenged: "each and everyone of you to come out with me, not to fight, but to show you evidence which will disprove all your propaganda".
NP leader F W de Klerk had asked him why the government was employing racism in reverse and punishing the Afrikaner by dismissing them from government.
However, when he had asked De Klerk for statistics to support the contention, he had been unable to do so.
The president insisted government was acting "very sensitively", and that this was borne out in the presidency's staff composition.
"I challenge any one of you that they (the opposition) do not have the record which we the ANC have established about accommodating all population groups in the country."
Even his head of security and two secretaries, whom he called "boeremeisies", were from the old regime, the president said.
There was even a policeman on his staff who was involved in the Khotso house bombing whom he had refused to dismiss.
"I am concerned not about what people did in the past, but what they do now. So the whole hue and cry of affirmative action being a reverse form of racism is a misplaced perception."
On opposition criticism of the government's handling of the crime issue, he said: "We cannot claim to have realised everything we wish to achieve, but no one can question the commitment of this government to deal with the root causes of the problem ..."
Government action to combat crime as stated in his state of the nation address, included dealing firmly against corrupt officials in the criminal justice system, clear delivery targets and deadlines and the enacting of legislation on bail conditions and minimum sentences.
"What message are we then sending out to society and the outside world, when we assert that South Africa has become the most murderous country since 1994?"
This was "callous insensitivity" to the fact that government had eradicated the scourge of political violence and repression which had left hundreds of thousands dead, the president said.
Murders whose gruesome nature was only starting to come out in the hearings of the truth and reconciliation commission, he said in another broadside at the NP.
The president said, however, he was confident that in all political parties there were leaders who could rise above the "narrow mind-set of one section of society".
The presidential debate had also shown that there were good men and women who could identify weaknesses and dangers, but who also did not lose sight of the opportunities that beckoned.