6 April 2016
Sunday 10 April 2016 will mark the 23rd anniversary of the cowardly assassination of Comrade Chris Hani (born 28 June 1942). SACP General Secretary Comrade Blade Nzimande, among other leaders of the alliance will address the main Commemoration Ceremony, to be held as follows.
Date: Sunday, 10 April 2016
Venue: Thomas Titus Nkobi Memorial Park, also known as South Park Cemetery, Boksburg, Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality.
Time: The media is advised to arrive as early as 7:00am for a comprehensive coverage of the event, including preview interactions with senior leaders of the SACP and other alliance partners.
Brief overview of Hani's revolutionary life and cowardly assassination
Hani was the General Secretary of the SACP and member of the national executive committee of the ANC. He fought for national liberation and socialism. As part of his revolutionary activism Hani served the joint ANC-SACP liberation army, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in various capacities with dedicated commitment and loyalty.
Hani expressed his views without fear or favour but once the organisations he led arrived at a decision he respected and upheld the outcome.
Early in 1969 he authored together with six other combatants a memorandum that initiated an important process of critical self-introspection by the ANC culminating in its watershed Consultative Conference held in Morogoro, Tanzania.
The conference emerged with a decisive perspective, the first Strategy and Tactics document of the ANC. The document defined the way forward that contributed immensely to the achievement of the 1994 democratic breakthrough. The perspectives elaborated in the 1969 ANC Strategy and Tactics were widely shared by other alliance partners and the document became more than only an ANC document but the Strategy and Tactics of the whole of the alliance.
Hani was MK Chief of Staff when the armed struggle was suspended after unbanning in the early 1990s. Despite holding a different view, he took leadership in implementing the decision. This quality of his revolutionary content and leadership, his respect for the principles of democratic centralism, will forever remain diametrically opposed to a counter-portrayal of Hani individualistically, his de-basing from collective organisation, responsibilities and leadership.
Hani's murderers, Janusz Waluz and Clive Derby-Lewis were sentenced to death. Shortly after their arrest they were found to be in possession of a hit list with the names of prominent leaders of the SACP and the ANC among others Comrades Joe Slovo and Nelson Mandela and a description of the physical features of their residences. Waluz's and Derby-Lewis's death penalties were later commuted to life imprisonment - thanks to the struggle of Comrade Chris Hani and his national liberation alliance that fought for the right to life, the very right Waluz and Derby-Lewis permanently denied Hani on 10 April 1993.
To this day, 23 years since they were convicted of the cold-blooded murder, Waluz - who wants to be released from prison on parole and Derby-Lewis - who was released almost a year ago on grounds of medical parole both remain unrepentant. The SACP opposed parole for Derby-Lewis, and is opposed to parole for Waluz.
Waluz and Derby-Lewis have not changed their attitudes. They failed correctional services. They do not show any real remorse. They have not demonstrated any understanding of the enormity of the murder they committed. The murder of Hani pushed our country to the brink of a civil war. To this day, more than a decade since they were denied amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the unreliable Derby-Lewis and Waluz who killed Hani with a gun that was taken from military armoury are still refusing to make full disclosure of the truth.
This includes details of the removal and passage of the gun from the military armoury to the murder; other people who were involved in planning and executing the murder or who had prior knowledge of it; other people who participated in compiling the hit list, reordering it and the reasons thereof; the origins and passage of the silencer that they used. Justice has not served its full course in the case of the murder of Hani. Until then it will remain irrational and unreasonable, one-sided and therefore biased in favour of the murderers as well as an insult to the true values of ubuntu/botho and compassion to expect all the people who were affected by the murder of Hani to, simplistically, "move on".
Issued by the SACP
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