THEY lived a grim life and suffered a barbaric death: three black laundry workers who earned £50 a month for a 13-hour shift were bundled into a dry-cleaning machine, doused in chemicals and left to die.

They were discovered by police who went to the shop to look for the women and were overcome by the stench. Joyce Lesito, 24, one of the murdered women, was five months’ pregnant. Before her death she had been urging her workmates to join a trade union.

Two black gardeners were arrested by police under suspicion of murder. But as the investigation unfolded the focus switched to the owner of the dry-cleaning business. Now three members of a white family await trial for the murders that have exposed the racial tensions that still exist in small- town South Africa, 11 years after the end of apartheid.

Charl Colyn, 53, the owner of the laundry, his daughter, Isabel, 22, and son-in-law, Jacques Smit, 25, have been charged with the murders of Ms Lesito and her colleagues Victoria Ndweni and Constance Moeletsi.

Ruan Swanepoel, a family friend, has also been charged with murder. The accused, who have been remanded in custody, have all pleaded not guilty.

The killings have shocked crime-weary South Africans and cast a spotlight on the town of Vereeniging.

Set on the huge Vaal plateau southwest of Johannesburg, Vereeniging is like many small Afrikaner towns — an unremarkable place of grey concrete office buildings and fast- food outlets. Broad streets, with names such as Voortrekker and Pretorious, testify to its history as one of the bastions of the Boers — the hardy descendants of the Dutch settlers who trekked into South Africa’s vast interior to escape British colonial rule.

Until the murders, the town’s only claim to fame was as the place where the peace treaty that ended the Anglo-Boer War in 1902 was signed. The killings have brought racial tensions to the surface and reopened old wounds. They have also emphasised how deep racial divisions remain in South Africa.

In places like Vereeniging — far from Johannesburg or Cape Town — the end of white minority rule did not see the arrival of South Africa’s famed “Rainbow Nation”. On the surface, nothing much changed.

“They do their thing and we do ours,” said Colin, a young activist with the ruling African National Congress. “Both communities were happy about that.” There was a sort of pact not to dwell too much on the past, but focus on the future.

The discovery of the three bodies shattered that uneasy coexistence and brought the hostility with which both sides regard each other to the surface. Felicia Mohoakoane, a superviser at the laundry claimed that the owners were racists, “They have done bad things in the past, and thought they could get away with it,” she said.

The case could take several years to reach court. In the meantime, Vereeniging is getting on with life: the Colyns’s dry-cleaning shop has re-opened, and family friends are filling in for black employees who refuse to return to work.

The town’s whites maintain that the killings were a result of “black on black” violence. “It was a dispute over other issues, but it is easy to blame the white man. They have taken the wrong people but they don’t care,” said a woman who asked not to be named. “Nowadays they have everything on their side.” In court Dorothy Moeletsi, mother of Constance, wept as Mr Colyn embraced his daughter in the dock.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Mandela’s tribe threatens President Zuma
• The French empire strikes back
• Wife of cheating governor exacts a political revenge