At this point he gazed down from the raised platform that had been built for the occasion and gave a plausible impression of a man who would struggle to find the composure necessary to complete his eulogy.

‘We will find those who directed this terrible crime – not because Lesedi was a Motlantshe, not because his family helped to free South Africa. No, we will … we will find these underground terrorists who did this because he was a child of the new South Africa and every child is precious. They are our future.’

Josiah Motlantshe led the cheers. It was his turn next. He dabbed at his cheeks as he told the mourners how Lesedi had been a son, a friend and colleague all rolled into one and what a gaping hole there would be in his life from now on. His wife, Priscilla, stared at him, her face rigid, devoid of any emotion. Motlantshe ended by asking if anyone in the congregation wanted to add anything.

Maki stood up, the apparent spontaneity of the invitation spoiled by the alacrity with which she strode to the platform and the typewritten piece of paper she unfolded on her way there. She said she spoke for all of Lesedi’s many friends who would remember him as a man who would stop at nothing to help someone less fortunate than himself. She told them of the time when the two of them – just the two of them – had been travelling in a rural area and come across a family by the roadside with an elderly woman lying on a mat. They were waiting for a bus to take the woman to hospital in the next big town.

‘That was an hour’s drive from where we were at the time,’ she said.

Lesedi had had no hesitation in bundling the four villagers into his car and driving them to the provincial capital.

‘He asked me to sit at the back so the old man could have his rightful place in the front seat. That was the kind of man Lesedi was,’ she said. ‘I will treasure the time I had with him and will for ever wonder what might have been.’

The press pack, cordoned off to one side at the front of the church, could barely contain itself. This was pure gold. The cameras flashed so continuously, you couldn’t distinguish one burst of white light from another.