SACP demands Chris Hani inquest
Updated | By Pieter van der Merwe
Lawyers representing the South African Communist Party (SACP) are exploring ways to reopen the investigation into the murder of Chris Hani.
Janusz Walus was granted parole by the High Court in Pretoria last year, but Justice Minister Micheal Mashuta has approached the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.
The matter has been postponed to the end of May. In the meantime, Walus will remain behind bars.
The SACP's Solly Mapaila believes the 64-year-old should serve out his full sentence, as the part believes he has not made a full disclosure. The party remains convinced that there were others involved in the crime.
The other man implicated in the murder is Clive Derby-Lewis, who died in November last year shortly after being released on medical parole.
Derby-Lewis secured the weapon for Walus who pulled the trigger outside Hani's Boksburg home on the morning of 10 April, 1993.
Mapaila explains that the weapon was military-issued.
"Quite clearly none of the two would have walked into the military armory to pick up the weapon. There would have been cooperators from inside.
"There are many leads that were not followed. I think that it was done quite in haste at the time."
Shortly before his death, Derby-Lewis appeared in a documentary, in which he discussed the attack.
"Chris Hani was a hard-line communist who was determined, at all costs, even laying the country to waste, to achieve his political aims. He was a radical, he was uncontrollable by the ANC higher authorities," he told Forum Films.
Mapaila insists Derby-Lewis portrayed a "continued hatred" for the communists while on his death bed.
He also hinted at a network of like-minded people who might still have a presence in South Africa.
"That's why we feel that this matter must be thoroughly investigated," explains Mapaila.
Mapaila says government should respond to the call as it is only with the full truth of what happened that both the Hani family and the SACP could find full disclosure.
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