Paul Simon may have apologised for defying the cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa - but he still maintains he did nothing wrong.

Simon's visit to SA in the mid-1980s is the subject of a documentary, Under African Skies , which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the US this week. His trip - after which he recorded his Graceland album, which sold more than 14 million copies - was in defiance of the cultural boycott instituted by the United Nations.

Among those critical of his actions was Dali Tambo, the son of late ANC president Oliver Tambo, and the founder and head of Artists Against Apartheid. The apology and a meeting between the two are featured in the documentary.

In an interview with the Sunday Times after the film's premiere, Simon said: "It was good to see Dali Tambo and speak to him. I really was pretty angry with him 25 years ago.

"It was good to mend those fences and, I wouldn't go so far as to say it was cathartic, but it was definitely a good idea to patch up those arguments."

Simon was still smarting from the ruckus his visit caused, saying he believed that Nelson Mandela, who was in jail at the time, would not have supported a ban on artists visiting SA .

He said: "Being the extraordinary, insightful person he is, he would have said: 'A boycott of tanks, yes; a boycott of segregated performances, yes; but a boycott of the culture of our country - no, it doesn't make sense'. But that's my imagination."

Tambo described the meeting last year as frank and brotherly. He said: "He understood what I was saying [and] apologised ... I told him there's no need to apologise and I reminded him that the majority of musicians did uphold the boycott as their contribution to the liberation of South Africa."

Released in August 1986, Graceland won Album of the Year and Record of the Year at the Grammy awards. The documentary follows Simon as he travels back to SA to reunite with the musicians he collaborated with on the album, including Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Hugh Masekela.

Even though the film shows him apologising to Tambo, Simon maintains in the documentary that he did not do anything wrong, telling Tambo: "I'm sorry if my lack of awareness gave you any reason to believe I was harming the cause. I certainly wasn't meaning that.

"Artists have a way of looking at things that is political - but it isn't political in the same way as politicians, because artists aren't trying to control anybody or tell anybody how to do things."

He said he had been "uncomfortable and struck by the extreme racial tension" in the country at the time and reminisced about visiting township shebeens.

"When I went to the shebeens, when I was snuck in there by the musicians, nobody was listening to township music. They were listening to Parliament-Funkadelic.

"What happened when Graceland became a worldwide hit, and the traditional music of South Africa became hip all over the world, then South Africa started to take pride in a musical form they considered old hat."

The Sundance Film Festival ends this weekend after showing 200 feature and documentary films.