Mandela Acts to Head Off Grumblings : South Africa: He abandons appointment of scandal-plagued cleric to U.N. post. President also tries to heal rift caused by his estranged wife.

Hoping to defuse growing allegations of graft and favoritism in his new government, President Nelson Mandela abandoned a controversial appointment Monday and unsuccessfully sought to repair a widening political rift caused by his estranged wife, Winnie Mandela.

Allan Boesak, one of the country’s most famous anti-apartheid clerics, was forced to withdraw his already-stalled nomination as envoy to the United Nations in Geneva after acknowledging that he may face criminal charges.

Police are investigating allegations that Boesak and several officials at a charitable foundation he headed misdirected or misappropriated about $600,000. Much of the money was donated by Scandinavian aid groups and was meant for projects aimed at helping underprivileged children and other victims of apartheid.

Boesak and his staff at the Foundation for Peace and Justice “enriched themselves substantially” with the donated funds over a five-year period, according to a lengthy report prepared by a Johannesburg law firm hired by the aid groups.

The reported missing money includes about $120,000 that American singer Paul Simon donated to the Children’s Trust, an aid group administered by Boesak’s foundation, after Simon’s much-publicized 1988 concert tour of South Africa.

The lawyers’ report said Boesak paid himself an extravagant salary and apparently used other foundation funds to help buy and renovate a new house, to settle his wife’s debts and to pay for their wedding reception and travel abroad. In effect, it said, three out of four donated dollars were misused.

The lead donor, Danish Church Aid, complained in a statement that the aid groups were victims of “fraud of a dimension we’ve never seen before.”

In emotional letters and news conferences last week, Boesak denied any wrongdoing and blamed the foundation’s bookkeeper for smearing his name. But Boesak did not dispute that he had given a major voter-education contract to a video company owned by his wife and that he had approved undocumented “loans” to foundation officials.

On Monday, Boesak said he had withdrawn his name for the U.N. posting and would sell his house to help pay the foundation’s debts. “I do this not in admission of guilt but to allow the process to be completed unhindered,” he said in a statement.

Boesak, 49, was a crucial leader of the anti-apartheid resistance in South Africa during the harsh emergency rule of the 1980s. He headed the Geneva-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches until 1990, when he was forced to resign his post and his ministry over a sex scandal.

Boesak’s current troubles have been overshadowed, however, by the growing storm around Winnie Mandela. The president’s estranged wife has been called “Mother of the Nation” for her stoic defiance of brutal government harassment during her husband’s 27-year imprisonment.

But her role as a leader has been sorely tested. She was convicted of kidnaping in 1991 after the abduction and murder of a 14-year-old boy by her bodyguards. Her five-year sentence was later reduced to a fine.

The Mandelas publicly separated in 1992, reportedly because of her marital infidelity, and their relations in public have been icy ever since.

Winnie Mandela retained a fervent following in the townships, however, and the new president appointed her deputy minister for arts, culture, science and technology after last April’s all-race elections.

President Mandela angrily summoned his Cabinet last week to discuss news reports that Winnie Mandela had openly criticized his government for moving too slowly to combat racism and too quickly to appease whites. She made the comments at the public funeral of a black policeman shot dead while on strike last month by white riot squad officers in Soweto.

Deputy President Thabo Mbeki later confronted her to deliver the Cabinet’s decision: Resign or retract the remarks. She backed off somewhat Monday.

In a carefully worded letter to Mandela, she said she didn’t mean “to insult the president” or to embarrass the government. Her intention, she wrote, was to correct the “impression of the people . . . that we neither care nor know” about the legacy of apartheid.

But yet another scandal involving the president’s estranged wife refused to go away.

Nelson Mandela held urgent talks Sunday with 11 senior officials of the African National Congress’ powerful Women’s League, which Winnie Mandela heads. All 11 resigned last week to protest what they called poor leadership, little accountability and undemocratic practices under the president’s wife.

The uproar arose over charges that Winnie Mandela had abused her government position to help two private ventures. First, critics say, she used her official stationery and offices to launch a new entertainment company started by her daughter Zinzi Mandela-Hlongwane.

When other promoters complained of a conflict of interest, Winnie Mandela accused them of racism. She added that she had “a dim view” of the Rolling Stones rock group for hiring a white promoter to coordinate their first concerts in South Africa this month.

Then, on Thursday, she called a news conference to launch a joint tourism company with film star Omar Sharif and the Women’s League. The league’s treasurer, Adelaide Tambo, the widow of former ANC President Oliver Tambo, quit the following day, saying she hadn’t been consulted on the venture.

On Saturday, 10 other members of the 25-woman national executive committee also quit. They included Mandela’s health minister, Nkosazana Zuma, and several members of Parliament. Despite the president’s intervention, the women have refused to withdraw their resignations.