South Africans reacted with stunned shock yesterday to a video screened on national television showing three black men being hunted down by dogs urged on by their police handlers.
The footage showed a black man - suspected of being an illegal immigrant - running though long grass being pounced on by a powerful police dog and repeatedly savaged.
The unfortunate victim was not alone. His two fellow victims were subject to equally savage attacks by the dogs.
The three victims, already prisoners of the police, had been taken to a deserted mine dump. They were then let loose by the six policemen who knew their attack dogs would have little difficulty in running them down. Not content with hearing the black men scream for mercy, they later assaulted the prisoners.
One of the policemen was heard to confront his victim in Afrikaans. "Are you a kaffir?" he asked. "Say you are a nigger!" he demanded. When the man kept quiet, he was struck across the head and asked if he had heard of the WWF - a possible acronym for White Wolf Force and a possible reference to White Wolves, a shadowy organisation, one of whose members, Barend Strydom, gunned down more than a dozen black South Africans in 1988.
It was as if the policemen - all of whom have been arrested on the orders of the Police Commissioner, Mr Jackie Selebi, and who now face charges of attempted murder - were in a state of denial about the loss of power by whites.
The video was filmed in 1998, reportedly with the consent of the policemen involved. It was supplied to Special Assignment, a South African television programme, about 10 days ago. A question which no one dared ask publicly hung over South Africa yesterday. It was whether the timing of the video's release was connected to local government elections next month, in which the newly formed Democratic Alliance - an amalgam of the white-led Democratic Party and New National Party - is energetically campaigning to win black votes in an attempt to establish a bridgehead in the ANC's mainly black constituency.