With the ink still drying on the massive Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, confidential discussions are in progress with the aim of broadening the process of amnesty beyond the parameters of the TRC.
The interlocutors in the talks are the National Party (which governed South Africa from 1948 to 1994 and which initiated the dialogue) and members of the present ruling party, the African National Congress.
As if in anticipation of pressure for a blanket pardon, the TRC report, conscious of the need "to avoid a culture of impunity and to entrench the rule of law", specifically urges South Africans to resist "the granting of general amnesty in whatever guise".
The TRC's enabling law empowers the amnesty committee, which is still sitting to complete a backlog of work, to pardon politically motivated offenders, provided that they fully disclose details of their crimes.
The National Party's motivation for seeking another route to amnesty is plain enough. Its two immediate past leaders, former presidents F.W. de Klerk and P.W. Botha, are held accountable by the TRC for human rights abuses. Neither has applied for amnesty from the TRC's special committee. They thus face prosecution, as well as civil claims for compensation by victims.
The former military and police generals who served under Mr De Klerk and Mr Botha fall in the same category. They include Mr Magnus Malan and Mr Constand Viljoen, both former chiefs of the Defence Force.
On the face of it the ANC is a less likely beneficiary. Though the ANC is found to have committed human rights abuses, only one of its leaders, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, president of the ANC Women's League, is specifically named in the TRC's definitive summary of its findings. Since she has many enemies in the ANC and is by renown an ill-disciplined member of the organisation, there may be a disposition in the ANC's upper echelons to leave her to her fate.
But another important consideration may dispose the ANC, or powerful individuals within it, to reappraise the question of amnesty.
Late last year 37 ANC members applied for, and were granted, blanket amnesty by the TRC amnesty committee. Though they submitted individual pleas, their applications were couched in the broadest possible language. As Mr Dene Smuts of the Democratic Party put it at the time, "They have applied for amnesty for everything in general and nothing in particular."
ANC notables on the list include the Deputy President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, the Defence Minister, Mr Joe Modise, the Foreign Minister, Mr Alfred Nzo, and, ironically, the TRC chief executive officer, Mr Biki Minyuku. But unfortunately for the 37 the decision to grant them amnesty was rejected by the High Court in Cape Town, which referred the applications back to the TRC amnesty committee.
The applicants are now required to submit supplementary information detailing for what offences they are seeking amnesty. Their reluctance to do so in the first place suggests that the details may be embarrassing, either to them or to the ANC. It may account for the willingness of ANC leaders to at least listen to National Party pleas for an alternative route to amnesty.
One option, which was mooted by the National Party, is to enact the rescinded Further Indemnity Act of 1992, which led to the release of hundreds of ANC prisoners - including the controversial bomber, Robert McBride, who had been sentenced to death for detonating a bomb which killed three unarmed women - without their having to publicly detail their involvement in past crimes.