He arrived in shackles holding a miniature soccer ball and dancing slightly. He would not raise his right hand to take the oath, saying he preferred to put it over his heart. Once that was settled, he promptly refused to testify at all until he had had a chance to talk with his family.

But when Jerry Richardson, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's chief bodyguard in the late 1980's and one of her closest confidants, finally began talking today, his story was chilling.

''My hands are full of blood today because I would be instructed to kill and I would do like I was told,'' he told South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Mr. Richardson, 48, who is serving a life sentence for the killing of 14-year-old Stompie Seipei, described beating, torturing and killing people whenever ''mommy'' (his name for Mrs. Mandela) asked him to do so. He was officially the coach of a soccer team she sponsored, the Mandela United Football Club. But the team rarely played, he said.