Popular dislike of the war obliged the country's rulers to be less helpful than America would have liked though the true extent of Saudi co-operation, like that of other Arab countries, remains murky.
As Alex Boraine, who served as deputy to Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the commission, reminds us, the offer of forgiveness which formed the centrepiece of the commission was the outcome of compromise between white minority rulers and the unenfranchised black majority: the price of securing a peaceful transition, and in particular the co-operation of the apartheid security services.