9 May 1997
The SACP categorically rejects the claims made yesterday Joe Nkuna in his amnesty application to the TRC. According to Nkuna, our late general secretary, comrade Chris Hani, ordered him and his brother Conrad to launch a hand-grenade attack against the Nelspruit house of Johannes Shabangu. At the time, comrade Shabangu was the ANC regional treasurer. The order was supposedly given in a meeting in the SACP head-office.
No such meeting took place. No such orders were given. We were not ordering attacks on anyone's home in the post-1990 period, least of all against the homes of fellow comrades.
We should add that Johannes Shabangu, now the national organiser of the ANC and formerly an MK soldier who was captured and sentenced to death by the apartheid regime, was well-known to and deeply respected by comrade Chris Hani.
Joe Nkuna's claims are the wild inventions of someone desperately trying to be released from a nine year prison sentence. He is abusing the fact that comrade Hani himself is notable to refute these claims.
Issued by: SACP Head Office