Hani Slain to Create Chaos, Killer Testifies

Popular South African Communist leader Chris Hani was murdered in 1993 to trigger chaos, spark a right-wing coup and end President Frederik W. de Klerk’s “betrayal of his Afrikaner nation,” one of the killers said. Former right-wing politician Clive Derby-Lewis apologized to Hani’s widow as she sat at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing where he appealed for amnesty. Derby-Lewis supplied the gun that Polish anti-Communist immigrant Janusz Walus used to assassinate Hani, a people’s hero second only to President Nelson Mandela. Derby-Lewis and Walus were sentenced to death, but Mandela has since suspended capital punishment. Both men are asking for amnesty, which the commission can grant if it is satisfied that they have told the full truth and that the crime was political.