He was engaged in the tough business of dragging Welsh Labour politics out of the culture of machine politics, a culture in-bred by decades of rule by one-party local government statelets. He has real achievements to his name, but we should be clear about what they are. But in the hard politics and recent memory of South Africa, the struggle is to stamp out every remnant of white supremacy. To that extent the Truth and Reconciliation Commission could pursue the former only at the expense of the latter.. WHAT REALLY matters about Ron Davies being deprived of his car, mobile phone and political career at knife-point in Brixton is not the questions it leaves unanswered about his walk on the Common, but the chance it offers for a fresh start in Welsh politics. Although Mr Davies and his family deserve our sympathy, the tone of some of his premature obituaries has been one of insincere hagiography. In President Mandela's high-minded reach for multiracialism there may be only one course: putting the past behind you.

To the average citizen of South Africa, investigating the past has one overriding aim It is to put the spotlight on the sins of the oppressors. Of course the dominating theme of past history has been the struggle against white domination by the local black population. But in waging that war the "freedom" movements of southern Africa have perpetrated far worse atrocities on their black rivals and their own members than ever they have against the "enemy". That truth may help the victims, but it doesn't help reconciliation, which may sound warm and comforting in theory, but is all too hard and uncomfortable in practice. His arrest has shown that the dead faces of the past cannot be air-brushed away, that the voices that screamed out in the Villa Grimaldi are still capable of touching us.Fergal Keane is a special correspondent for BBC News.

If the Commission was to retain credibility, it had to tackle head-on ANC torture. The best thing that could have happened to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was that the ANC should have attempted to stop publication this week of its report - and failed. THE TRUTH must hurt to set you free. The cruelty and pain are on record, written in the words of victim and perpetrator alike.It may well be that Pinochet, like other dictators, both left and right, escapes criminal sanction The world is the world, after all. But his arrest has comforted the survivors of torture and the families of the disappeared.

If nothing else, the General will know what it is like to lose the sweet gift of freedom, even if just for a few weeks, even if he is confined in a comfortable hospital room. The commission may have been flawed, and there will be many families who feel cheated by the amnesty process. But it has achieved one crucial success: it is now impossible to deny the terror and indignities of the past. And I know that if Chile's democrats had tried to pursue a vendetta against the military and police, the fragile democracy would have been torn asunder.But the tragedy of Chile is that amnesty has taken place without disclosure, absolution has been granted without confession. How different from South Africa, whose Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported its findings this week. Now, I've spent long enough reporting the ambiguities of divided societies to know that the politics of retribution can be very dangerous. Be they creatures of the left or right, their power is based on a cynical contempt for the will of the people.