The inquiry while exposing the brutal methods of the police found that no one was to blame for his death

The inquiry, while exposing the brutal methods of the police, found that no one was to blame for his death.”They are a constant reminder to me of the need for justice to be done,” he said. “I have been trying to reopen the inquest for three years now, without any luck.” The main problem has been money.The basis of his case before the constitutional court is that the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act contravenes the right to seek justice in the courts, and a state’s obligation to prosecute individuals guilty of gross abuses of human rights, violations of Geneva conventions and crimes against humanity.Apartheid, he points out, was declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations General Assembly in 1973. If the constitutional court agrees to hear the case – and it is a long shot – he plans to seek an injunction preventing commission hearings until the court makes its ruling.For the past three years Mr Morolo has shared an office, so to speak, with Steve Biko. If convicted, they say, it would be up to President Nelson Mandela to grant them amnesty, a move they would not oppose. What remains to be seen is whether the commission will tell some of the perpetrators of the worst abuses that the enormity of their crimes is beyond its ability to grant a pardon, thus opening the possibility of criminal prosecution.But if Cyril Morolo has his way, we may never know the answer Mr Morolo is the lawyer for the Mxenge and Biko families.

“Nobody consulted a single victim regarding the act that they passed. What they asked for was peace at all costs,” he said.It is not that Mr Mxenge and Mrs Biko are opposed to the principle of amnesty or reconciliation They want the perpetrators of crimes to stand trial. He has joined Ntsiki Biko in the case being brought before the constitutional court.What bothers Mr Mxenge most is that the politicians who drew up the act creating the truth commission had no mandate from the victims or their families. In February last year he formed the Association for the Victims of Unsolved Apartheid Atrocities. After Mxenge stopped to help them, they stabbed him more than 40 times before slitting his throat. They then dumped the body outside a Durban soccer stadium.Mr Coetzee confessed his role in the crime a few years ago, when he defected to join the African National Congress, and againduring the trial of a former colleague.

Today he works in the new government’s intelligence service, and has announced that he has applied to the truth commission’s amnesty committee.Churchill Mxenge feels cheated He wants Mr Coetzee and the others prosecuted. In early 1981, a security force officer and self- confessed murderer, Dirk Coetzee, was ordered to get rid of Mxenge and make it look like a robbery.After some days of surveillance during which Mr Coetzee poisoned Mxenge’s dogs, his men carried out their orders. They parked a truck along the road to their target’s house and pretended to have engine trouble. But a much larger group of critics has been in the shadows: the victims and their families.One such family is that of Churchill Mheli Mxenge. Churchill’s brother Griffiths was a leading black civil rights lawyer in Durban whose talent at defending anti-apartheid activists made him the scourge of the apartheid security establishment. It then has the power to decide on some kind of nominal reparation, which is not necessarily financial: it could be therapy for adults or scholarships for children.But many groups have always viewed the commission with deep suspicion. Until now most attention has been focused on white reaction to the body, and on Afrikaner fears of a witch-hunt.

A reparations committee will review victims’ statements, which will be made available to the amnesty committee. It is based on the constitutionally entrenched principle of amnesty for both sides in the apartheid conflict.In theory, at least, the commission’s work is straightforward. Perpetrators of human rights violations between 1960 and 1993 are supposed to approach the commission to explain what they did. In return for “full disclosure” of their politically motivated crimes, an amnesty committee headed by a judge can absolve them from prosecution if it is considered appropriate.While amnesty is not automatic, it is expected to be granted in most cases. If he is not careful, this commission is going to destroy him.”Today, almost 19 years after her husband’s murder, Ntsiki Biko, a nurse aged 49, is undoubtedly the most prominent figure leading a crusade against Archbishop Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.This week, lawyers representing Mrs Biko and two other families of apartheid victims expect to file a case in South Africa’s Constitutional Court, challenging the legality of the commission and the law which created it.Their chances of success are slim because the act is a cornerstone of the new South Africa.