THE POLITICAL career of Ms Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the politically ambitious and vociferously radical former wife of the President, Mr Nelson Mandela, is once again on a knife-edge.
She has survived the adverse publicity which emanated from last year's divorce hearing - including documented evidence that the self-styled champion of the poor was spending nearly 100,000 rand (Pounds 14,300) a month - only to find herself subpoenaed to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The TRC investigation will focus on the activities of the notorious Mandela United Football Club, whose members served as Ms Madikizela- Mandela's body-guards in the late 1980s and who were accused by the pro-ANC Mass Democratic Movement of conducting a "reign of terror" in Soweto.
The trial record of Charles Zwane, a member of the "football club" who was convicted of nine murders, contains testimony that Ms Madikizela- Mandela held the power of "life and death" over its members and that they would kill for her.
The head of the TRC investigative unit, Mr Dumisa Ntsebeza, has declined to comment on the pending investigation, apart from confirming that Ms Madikizela-Mandela will appear before it within a month and that its inquiries go "far beyond" what is publicly known about the football club.
Given the record of the club - its coach, Jerry Richardson is serving a life sentence for murdering Stompie Sepei, the 14-year-old boy kidnapped by members of the team at the behest of their patron - the TRC investigation is critical to Ms Madikizela-Mandela's future.
An unfavourable finding could easily negate her recovery since the divorce case, the hallmark of which was the manner in which she overcame those who dared to stand against her when she was re-elected president of the ANC Women's League in May.
The TRC investigation is believed to have been initiated in response to applications for amnesty from several former associates of Ms Madikizela- Mandela.
They include Richardson, who referred reverentially to Ms Madikizela- Mandela as "Mamma" during his trial in 1990, Zwane and Xolisa Falati.
Falati, who was convicted with Ms Madikizela-Mandela for the kidnapping in December 1988 of Stompei Sepei and three companions from the Methodist manse in Soweto, has become a bitter foe of the woman with whom she once stood in the dock. She now insists that she lied during the trial in an effort to save Ms Madikizela-Mandela. Unlike Ms Madikizela-Mandela, whose five-year sentence was reduced to a 15,000 rand fine on appeal, Falati has had to serve her two-year prison sentence.