I am sitting in the bench nearest the dock as I type this. But the dock is empty.

A lone microphone on a stalk prods the courtroom air unprofitably: the former president has been allowed to sit elsewhere, in a pink cushioned chair.

The dock, apparently, would be uncomfortable for a man aged 82. So Mr Botha has been allowed to assume the appearance of a bystander at the scene of an accident of his own making.

There are five rows of benches behind the dock in a room not really big enough to contain the allegations being thrown around it.

A woman next to me is quietly typing too. The debate is becoming strangely academic, a test of words we thought we all understood perfectly well already.

Documents have been produced which detail decisions taken in the 1980s by the State Security Council, a committee chaired by PW Botha himself.

He leans back in his padded chair as the words are discussed, occasionally scratching a bald patch the size of a small township, but otherwise just - sitting there.

The documents show the council ordered action against prominent opponents; it decided they should be - and here come the crucial words - 'eliminated', 'neutralised', 'destroyed' and 'killed'.

For a moment I wonder: is history on pause here - will PW Botha suddenly be directly implicated in state murder?

But hold on. His place beside the dock, not in it, conveys the real import of this case - the former president is likely only to be fined at the end, because he's only charged with failing to appear at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

So what we're watching really is academic, more a test of lawyers' silky skills than anything, and when these words come round again - neutralise, eliminate, destroy, kill - and I wonder if the force of their kryptonite weight could send them crashing through the courtroom floor.

I hear Mr Botha's team arguing that they need not always mean what they seem to, and his State Security Council actually didn't want anyone to come to harm.

It is farcial, and there is even a joke to match. The Botha lawyer Lapa Laubscher complains of a missing document.

'It was in my file this morning,' he says, 'but it's been mislaid.'

He casts a glance at the magistrate. The document has been, Mr Laubscher says slyly, 'neutralised.'

Everybody laughs. Even the team from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission look as if they appreciate the gag, momentarily before gagging on it.

And still this large bald man, 82 and frail, sits in his crisp blue suit a few feet away from me, listening.

He looks like all the cartoons that have ever lampooned him: just as disproportionate, with his obvious nose, sloping shoulders and lopsided shallow jaw.

His head moves from his lawyer to the witness as if watching some slow-motion tennis match where the ball is lobbed too often. Then they call Prime Evil.

That is the nickname by which Eugene de Kock is known. His trail of violence, murder and torture on the state's behalf in the 1980s earned him a 212-year sentence and an invitation to put the finger on Mr Botha in court.

He says he believes orders came from the then President, and that Mr Botha personally awarded him a medal, but his evidence doesn't quite clinch things.

And by now, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has arrived as well and he is listening keenly a yard away from the witness box as Mr de Kock accuses Mr Botha of cowardice for not admitting what he's done.

It is electrifying stuff. Mr de Kock, who caused mayhem and terror while working for the apartheid state, now looks like a librarian who's just broken off from reordering the science fiction shelves.

He stands in the witness box, hair immaculately combed, thick spectacles perched above a delicate if cruel mouth. The police have taken on the excited air of autograph hunters around him.

Prime Evil is asked for his expert views on the word 'neutralise', and he explains it would tend to suggest at least doing someone serious damage.

'I would not expect to take them out to a restaurant,' he says.

He explains how he bombed Khotso House, a Johannesburg church headquarters 10 years ago and was congratulated afterwards by generals and government ministers - not only that, he was told beforehand that if any policemen saw him bomb-planting he should feel free to shoot them dead.

In the end he leaves in his caged van, police crowding it like starstruck teenyboppers, and Mr Botha still just sits there in court.