for more than two years and held more than fifty public hearings around
the country. More than seven thousand individuals applied for amnesty,
but by the time the TRC report went to press in 1998, the amnesty commit-
tee had granted only about 150 amnesties, and it still had another two
thousand applications to deal with. 36
The commission started by hearing victims of human rights abuses tell
their stories, which were more horrific than anyone had imagined and
fully vindicated Mandela's suspicions that some sort of Third Force had
275