The publication of the commission's report, a planned step in the process of healing apartheid-created divisions, has instead unleashed the passions of political parties.
Fingered to various degrees by the TRC, most parties across the spectrum have condemned the truth body and asked for a blanket amnesty - while the report calls for "vigorous" prosecution of perpetrators of gross human rights violations.
A senior member of the opposition National Party, Mr David Malatsi, said amnesty was being granted mostly to "comrades and people in the struggle". He said a "general amnesty may contribute to reconciliation in the country. The granting of selective amnesty is causing polarisation."
The leader of the right-wing Freedom Front, Mr Constand Viljoen, has long called for a general amnesty, saying the courts should deal with prosecutions to "eliminate the one-sidedness (of the TRC) because the courts are supposed to be impartial". The leader of the radical black Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), Mr Stanley Mogoba, said in the Star newspaper yesterday that the release of the report should end the TRC chapter of the country's history. "We can't continue walking backwards into the future. There should be no prosecutions after the report," he said.
However, the liberal Democratic Party, the only group not implicated in the report, said: "Any change to the amnesty criteria half- way through the process would constitute gross inequality before the law."
The ruling African National Congress accused the TRC of "criminalising the liberation struggle" after the TRC accused it of summary executions and tortures in its camps in exile.
The ANC claimed that "some of the gross inaccuracies contained in the report will now unfortunately become part of South Africa's history."
The Deputy President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, certain to succeed President Nelson Mandela next year, said publication of sections of the report criticising the party "does not help the process for which the TRC was established".
Mr Mandela welcomed the report, however, as an "imperfect but crucial aid to reconciling all South Africans", but added: "It will seem artificial to some to place those fighting a just war alongside those whom they opposed."