How did human rights lawyer Vanessa Brereton bring herself to represent anti-apartheid activists in their struggles with the apartheid regime - yet spy on them for the government?

For journalist and former activist Mike Loewe, this was the worst kind of treachery. He had thought Brereton was his legal protector - but he now knows her security police handler was his interrogator when he was detained in 1985.

"The lawyer worrying about me and my 10 comrades back in the cells upstairs was his agent," he said.

Loewe wrote a passionate open letter yesterday to Brereton following her confession this week that she - and not National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka - was spy number RS452.

Brereton, he raged, was a lonely, sickly woman who had "leeched" anti-apartheid credibility off others and made a killing off representing activists oppressed by the state.

"You say, I am told, that as their lawyer you retained strict confidentiality - that you never betrayed them to your boss, their torturer. Yet you were, presumably, in their pay," Loewe wrote.

"So why did you do it, Vanessa? Let alone how ... Please, don't tell me you didn't find it thrilling, exciting, intoxicating?

"That's the problem with history - it's all so easy to forget how power was wielded in those days; how easy it was to be vicious to those who were outside of the ruling minority; how easy it was to see your opponents as somehow less than human."

But while the spy allegations around Ngcuka are being unravelled, he is not out of the woods.

While the Hefer Commission is satisfied Brereton is agent RS452, it must still investigate whether Ngcuka could have been a spy under a different codename.

The commission was to resume public hearings today after a five-day break to do more investigations and persuade the intelligence services to make available "truckloads" of documents deemed crucial to prove or disprove the allegations.

"I am RS452," Brereton told Independent Newspapers this week, breaking years of silence.

Her confession, published yesterday, has shocked former associates, many of whom had relied on her as their lawyer in their struggles with the notorious security police in the turbulent 1980s.

Ngcuka's spokesperson, Sipho Ngwema, was yesterday clearly pleased with the confession, which partly exonerates Ngcuka.

"We knew the truth was on our side. All the lies are being exposed ..." Ngwema said.

Hefer Commission secretary John Bacon called Brereton's confession a positive development, indicating it would make the commission's work easier.

The extended terms of reference issued by President Thabo Mbeki also asked the commission to investigate whether Ngcuka and his line manager, Justice Minister Penuell Maduna, had misused their offices due to "past obligations to apartheid".

Brereton's former handler, Bureau of State Security (Boss) agent R1653 Karl Edwards, confirmed yesterday that she was the real RS452.

"I am terribly shocked," Edwards said. "I did not really expect her to confess, and all along I was protecting her identity."

Suspicions against Brereton were first raised when Ngcuka's office countered media allegations last month that he had been a spy, by saying security police agent RS452 was a white woman from the Port Elizabeth area.

Information leaked to the media placed the unnamed woman at a meeting in 1989 with nine other anti-apartheid activists in Port Elizabeth.

Some of her former associates then approached the Hefer Commission with evidence that RS452 could be Brereton.

Bacon confirmed that human rights lawyer Glenn Goosen, a former associate of Brereton's, would still appear before the commission tomorrow to testify that she, and not Ngcuka, was agent RS452.

Goosen said yesterday that the implications were "quite serious" for a lawyer who worked for an agency she had fought on behalf of her clients.

Bacon said the commission would study Brereton's affidavit before deciding whether she should give testimony.

Her submission will give details about her recruitment as an informer in 1985 and her appointment as an undercover police constable a year later, with the designation RS452.

With acknowledgements to Christelle Terreblanche, Lee Rondganger, Sapa and The Star.