Victims braced the unusual cold in the province's capital, Pietersburg, to give their account of SAP and Lebowa police brutality.
It took less than 15 poignant minutes for the mother of former Mamelodi Civic Association secretary-general Stanza Bopape to put her request to the human rights violations committee.
"Help me find my son's bones so that I can bury him," a sobbing Mrs Francina Bopape urged.
Bopape was arrested by Hillbrow police in Johannesburg on June 9, 1988. He was never heard of again.
Police claimed he managed to escape from his captors after the vehicle he was travelling in had a puncture. The claim was reiterated by then Police Minister Adriaan Vlok in a meeting facilitated by former DP MP Jan van Eck with Bopape's late father.
"My husband died without knowing what happend to our son," Mrs Bopape said.
Truth commissioner Russell Ally said that police maintained to this day that Stanza had in fact escaped.
But his mother was adamant and incredulous: "I don't believe Stanza released himself and disappeared. I'm asking the police where they buried him. They know where my son is. They must give me my son. Even if it's his bones, I'll bury him."
Peter Mokaba's brother, Ernest, was also one of several victims to testify before the commission.
He explained how he and his family including his mother, who were not politically active, had been beaten, harassed and detained by the South African and Lebowa police because of their link with his brother, now an ANC MP.
Mokaba was not present at his brother's testimony.
Mokaba, who had been a student leader during the 1976 uprisings, was hunted by police, arrested, detained, released and re-arrested during the 1980s.
WHile in hiding, his family were hounded by police who thought that by treating them in this way, they would flush Peter out, Ernest said.
The family home was also bombed and at least four nails were imbedded in his head.
The family found they did not have the support of the community, who believed Peter was merely a "troublemaker", he said.
"Peter was not doing it for himself. Through our torture and our suffering he helped them (the community) become what they are today."
But it was not only police who were named as perpetrators of human rights abuses.
Former Northern Transvaal United Democratic Front leader Peter Nchabeleng's death in police custody saw family members identifying a school principal as an alleged police informer who tried to kill the veteran activist.
Nchabeleng's widow and son named David Sego Oebeila - now a Northern Province school inspector - as the man allegedly behind a letter bomb aimed at their father a few days before his death in police custody on April 11, 1986.
The letter bomb, disguised as Nchabeleng's son's school results, was never triggered because he realised something was amiss, Maurice Nchabeleng told the commission.
He also detailed how after his father's death he was arrested and taken to a garage where police claimed his father had been killed.
There was blood and water everywhere, and one policeman ordered him to wash his hands in his father's blood before he ate.
He refused and was tortured in the same room, Maurice said.
The commission was also asked to probe the death in police custody of PAC member and Lebowa Times journalist Lucky Kutumela, 24, who died on April 5, 1986.
His mother Anna told the commission that her son was killed by the Lebowa police in Mokopane police station.
According to witnesses he had been kicked, assaulted with a gun butt, hit with a hammer on his fingers and whipped about 41 times with a sjambok.
Lucky died the follwoing day.
The police were tried in a court of law but none of the witnesses to her son's assault were called and his killers were freed.
Kutumela said she had raised the matter with the Lebowa government in January 1994 but to date nothing had happend.
Police had accused her son of, among other things, writing biased reports about police brutalties.
"The police hated him. He was an activist, I later discovered that the police always complained about his writings."
The commission hearings continue on Thursday.