And even some of the blacks willing to forgive and forget - amazingly, the majority - complain that the hearings are stirring up too many painful memories.But while in Soweto they are lining up to give evidence about apartheid- era crimes, two court cases involving South Africa's most famous perpetrator of those crimes may yet fulfill all the wishful thinking of the commission's detractors and blow it out of the water.As the painful Soweto hearings were taking place, foreign journalists were having lunch in Johannesburg with Dirk Coetzee, self-confessed murderer and former captain in the South African security police.In 1989, Coetzee, an Afrikaner, committed the ultimate "betrayal", when he defected to the ANC and provided the first inside confirmation that state-backed hit squads, a so-called "Third Force", had operated in South Africa, murdering and torturing anti-apartheid activists and covertly fuelling violence between rival black political groups.Coetzee fled the country to make his "Third Force" allegations in London, where he was hidden at a series of secret addresses by ANC members in exile. Others complain that the ANC has been far too generous in accepting any responsibility for violence under apartheid. Its abuses, they argue, were hardly in the same league as the former government's.Former president FW de Klerk has branded the commission a witchhunt, warning it may "tear out the stitches of wounds that are beginning to heal". For many blacks, particularly those who lost family members, it is an exercise in political expediency, not justice. They want perpetrators to pay for the past, not indulge in a nationwide therapy session. Like President Mandela, he advocates forgiveness and reconcilation and leads by example. Under apartheid he languished in jail for 25 years, most of that time as Mandela's cellmate.

Without the commission, he says, South Africa might slip into a bitter political mire like that which has afflicted Northern Ireland.But the commission is attacked from all sides. "The average white does not accept any responsibility for the suffering of these people."Three months into the hearings - and already seeking a six-month extension to cope with the demand from victims to give evidence - white indifference is just one of a raft of criticisms directed at the commission.Walter Sisulu, 83, ANC veteran and Soweto resident, had a first-row seat when the township hearings opened on Monday. Ameila Molapo, paralysed by a police bullet when she was 11, gave testimony from her wheelchair. She only cried as she told how her mother died from shock the day she was injured. But as the litany of wrongs continued there were few whites at Regina Mundi to appreciate the victims' magnanimity."The trouble is that these hearings are seen by the majority of whites as blacks' business," said one of the few white visitors. "By my calculation that comes to more than pounds 10,000 per arrest," Mr Grant said.