IT COULD have been an occasion for high drama, for strutting lawyers, grand statements and thundering denunciations. Instead, the launch of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in East London's city hall yesterday was restrained, almost a muted affair.
For five hours, tile chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and his fellow commissioners listened patiently while five victims of apartheid era political crime recounted their sufferings. The 400 spectators - most of them black - listened quietly throughout the day.
The only excitement came when a bomb hoax forced the police to evacuate people during the morning session for all the calm inside the hall there were still those outside who would rather the commission did not go ahead.
With the commission now under attack from some on both sides of South Africa's racial divide, the first day of hearings by its committee on human rights violations involved political crimes committed against both blacks and whites.
First to speak before the commission was Mrs Noble Mohapi, who recounted how her husband, Mr Mapetla Mohapi, a local Black Consciousness leader and associate of Steve Biko, had died in police custody in 1976.
Next to speak were Mrs Elizabeth Hashe, Mrs Monica Godolozi and Mrs Nomali Galela, the wives of three civic activists who disappeared in 1985, abducted and murdered by the white security police.
With an official of the commission sitting beside them to comfort them if necessary, the three women recounted the torment they had undergone at the time and the mundane grind of bringing up children in a black township without a father's help or income.
Mrs Godolozi said she prayed that God would expose the truth about what had happened, and that those who killed her husband might, at least reveal where his remains were so they could be buried with dignity.
The last witness was Mr Karl Webber, an animal welfare inspector who was maimed in a 1993 machinegun attack on an East London hotel bar. While nobody admitted the attack, it bore the hallmark of the Pan Africanist Congress, which had a policy of attacking white civilians.
Mr Webber told the tribunal how he lost one arm and much of the use of the other in the attack, which killed his friend and five other civilians. Questioned by members of the Truth Commission, Mr Webber said he believed that appearing before it could help with reconciliation. He was less enthusiastic about the commission's legal duty to grant amnesty to all those who confessed freely.
"It could be deep down hurt to know that the guy would be a free man on the street, walking away when he has killed innocent people and disabled innocent people. But one just has to - if its granted accept it," he said.
Afterwards Archbishop Tutu said he had been deeply moved by the victims' eagerness to tell their stories. The strong attendance belied those who said that the commission did not enjoy popular support.
But the archbishop also admitted he was not entirely happy with the pace of the proceedings - five cases in one day is not enough for a commission that has less than two years to process thousands of statements and amnesty applications.
For the first time, he seemed to accept the commission would not be able to hear all the stories "that need to be told."
The commission's job was to establish, as full a picture was possible", he said, and this could be done by establishing the "patterns" of crime and violence in South Africa's past.