It was part of a deal to end a conflict in which there was no outright military victor and therefore no possibility of Nuremberg-style trials.”In all countries where there have been huge violations of human rights there are thousands of perpetrators,” he says. The truth, they say, is being “managed” and perpetrators are getting off scot-free.But the senior judge Richard Goldstone, a prominent white South African and recent chief prosecutor in the trial of alleged perpetrators of human- rights abuses in Bosnia, says critics of the TRC must judge it for what it is – a political compromise. It was murder, never politics.”THOSE WHO COMPLAIN the TRC robbed them of their right to criminal and civil court action argue that the Commission is conducting “flimsy” investigations and that for every highly publicised breakthrough many more cases remain unsolved. “My brother in particular would have felt betrayed that the movement sacrificed him for information They stabbed and stabbed my brother. The ANC looked after him and even employed him when he returned to South Africa.Mxenge is still an ANC member but feels betrayed. Coetzee made headlines in 1989 when he blew the whistle on government-backed hit squads He fled to London after defecting to the ANC. Mxenge was stabbed 40 times and his throat slit.Churchill Mxenge will contest the amnesty application of Dirk Coetzee, another former Vlakplaas commander who admitted, and has been convicted of, murdering his brother.

She joined forces with Churchill Mxenge, whose brother Griffiths, an ANC lawyer, was assassinated in 1981 when he stopped to help a man whose car appeared to have broken down. Last year she lost a bid to have the Constitutional Court declare the TRC’s amnesty powers unconstitutional. I know my husband wanted lasting peace for South Africa and if he is watching I want him to rest well.”Steve Biko’s widow Ntsiki, however, will oppose the application by her husband’s killers. ” I used to say I would never forgive those who murdered my husband but I will if they tell the truth. Instead they were dispatched all over South Africa to murder activists – and while the bodies of their victims burned many have confessed that they whiled away the hours drinking beer and barbecuing steaks.Mrs Hashe knows all this but her Christian faith tells her that deep down such men have consciences.

Vlakplaas, set in rural splendour near Pretoria, began a secret “counter-terrorism” unit but by the mid- Eighties its operatives had given up arresting suspects. They were disappointed that there were no remains to bury but have held a memorial service on the banks of the river.The women will not oppose the amnesty application of the five men, led by Brigadier Jack Cronje, a former head of the notorious Vlakplaas (“farm on the plains”) special police unit. Despite the horror, Mrs Hashe and Mrs Galela say knowledge has brought peace. The five have urged the National Party to admit it authorised their activities.

They cut up their bodies and threw them in the Great Fish River, the old 19th-century front line between the Xhosas and advancing white settlers. All came to nothing.Mrs Hashe was one of the first to give evidence to the TRC. Five former security policemen – including a brigadier – have since come forward to ask for amnesty for 40 murders including those of Hashe and his friends – known as the PEBCO Three – and Steve Biko, the father of black consciousness in South Africa, who was battered to death in police custody in 1977.The security policemen have confessed they kidnapped the PEBCO Three, tortured and killed them. For 11 years Mrs Hashe and her neighbour Nomali Rita Galela travelled the country looking for their husbands There were endless sightings. “I walked from my house to the road and from the road to my house all night long,” she says, remembering how she strained her eyes down the bumpy dirt track for the lights of Sipho’s van.The police later bombed and tear-gassed her home At first they taunted her that they had her husband’s body Later they denied all knowledge of his whereabouts. That night police patrols passed the Hashes’ home with worrying frequency.