A bomb scare, which saw commission chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu briefly evacuate the East London city hall, failed to disrupt the commission's historic first hearings for long.
A former secretary to slain black consciousness leader Steve Biko told the commission she was repeatedly tortured and detained by police after her activist husband's unexplained suicide in police custody in 1976.
Nohle Mohapi, the first of 28 witnesses due this week, said she wanted to find the real cause of her husband's death.
"I hope the truth will ultimately come out," she said as her testimony launched the commission's 18-month bid to paint as complete a picture as possible of ab/uses in South Africa between 1960 and 1993.
Mohapi's testimony was interrupted by reports of a bomb scare handed up to Tutu, who later ordered a 24-hour guard on the city hall to prevent further waste of valuable time. Only five of the scheduled seven witnesses testified on Monday.
The commission opened with a Xhosa hymn and Tutu lighting a tall white candle which will burn throughout the hearings in remembrance of those who died and disappeared.
"We are charged to unearth the truth about our dark past," Tutu said in his opening address. "That will contribute to the healing of wounded and traumatised people and in this manner promote unity and reconciliation."
Two large bags of tissues were available for witnesses who cried while testifying.
Tutu later declared the first day's hearings a success. "I think it went very well. All of us were deeply moved by what we heard. We believe it was a catharsis not just for the witnesses but also for us."
Moves are apparently afoot to interdict the commission to prevent it from hearing certain evidence.
Commission deputy chairman Alex Boraine told a media briefing that the state would oppose attempts to stop the commission from hearing testimony that implicated anyone in human rights abuses.
Commission legal adviser Hanif Vally and commissioner Denzil Potgieter on Monday rushed to Cape Town to oppose an interdict expected in the Cape Town Supreme Court on Tuesday.
In other testimony on Monday, unemployed former animal welfare inspector Karl Weber told the commission he lost his arm in a 1993 attack on an East London hotel and would like to see justice done.
"We heard what sounded like automatic fire next to us and someone shouted that we were under attack," he said.
"There was a guy at the door with an AK47 on his hip and he was swinging that AK all around the bar.
"I was lying there realising I couldn't move. After that I woke up in intensive care."
Weber said the attack cost him his left arm and 60 percent of the use of his right arm. He now lives off friends and a R410 disability grant and needs help to shave and bath.
"I hope the Truth Commission will investigate... and that justice will be done." Weber said it would hurt him if the commission used its powers to grant amnesty to his attackers.
The widows of three Port Elizabeth activists who disappeared in May 1985 asked the commission to help find their husbands' bodies so they could give them decent burials.
Sipho Hashe, Qawawuli Godolozi and Champion Galela were last seen alive at Port Elizabeth airport on May 8, 1985 after they received an invitation to meet a British embassy official.
In December 1994 a Johannesburg newspaper published the affidavit of a policeman who confessed to participating in the torture and murder of the three Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation members.
Elizabeth Hashe, the mother of nine children, told the commission about the abuction and disappearance of her husband Sipho, ending her testimony in tears with a plea for compensation and truth about the past.
"Please let my family be compensated... I am proud and would like to do the best for my children," she said.
The commission's investigation head, Dumisa Ntsebeza, says his unit will start investigating evidence heard at Monday's session.
Ntsebeza told SABC radio news the evidence presented so far was just a drop in an ocean of human rights abuse committed in the Eastern Cape during the apartheid years.