Gerald Pillay assesses one country's bold-and controversial-bid to come to terms with its past.

Anthony Duigan from Johannesburg gives his impressions of a conference that aimed to bring healing in South Africa.

We came to deepen the co-mingling of our selves and God's spirit within us, certain that spiritual strength and moral change will be necessary to a South Africa at peace with itself.

Apartheid has broken homes, broken trust, broken people. But its greatest effect has been on the South African psyche - and that is where the toughest battle will have to take place.

Her father, pioneer farmer Gray Leakey, was buried alive with satanic rites by a Mau Mau gang on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

At the moment a delicate balance of power prevails. The de Klerk government wields institutional power backed by the defence force and police; the ANC has demonstrated the weight of popular power and forced the government to come to terms with it.

Namibia, Africa's last colony, is on the threshold of `wonderful things... after suffering for so many years', South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on a recent visit here. But the transition from colonial South West Africa to independent Namibia will not be easy.

My wife and I come from a background of privilege and Protestantism - and are grateful for our heritage. But we have to face the fact that many react quite differently to that tradition.

Maggie Kirk, Pippa Faunce and Caroline Hewitt have now left their schools in Birmingham and the south of England.

South Africa is in a state of deep unrest. Recently there has been a hardening polarization of the extremes of both right and left.