Chris Hani's killers seek judicial review

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, NOV. 29. Clive Derby-Lewis and Janusz Walus, the convicted killers of Chris Hani, a hero of South Africa's liberation movement, are seeking a judicial review and reversal of the ruling by the Amnesty Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission refusing their application for amnesty. The Cape High Court has begun hearing the appeal.

Chris Hani, general secretary of the South African Communist Party, was shot and killed in the driveway of his house in Boksburg, near Johannesburg, on the morning of April 10, 1993. The actual killing was done by Janusz Walus, a Polish immigrant consumed by a hatred of communism. This passion was consistently flaunted by both the killers during their trial and the amnesty hearings. Chris Derby-Lewis, a former Conservative Party M.P., closely conspired with the killer and indeed gave the weapon and directives to him.

The killing was clearly intended to derail the then ongoing process of negotiations between the leaders of the liberation movement and the apartheid regime towards the adoption of a democratic Constitution and general elections for the first time in the history of South Africa. The killers also hoped that their act would unleash mass unrest and so enable the Right wing to make a bid for power. Thanks to the foresight and restraint shown by the leaders of the liberation movement, this did not happen. Both the killers were sentenced to death on October 15, 1993. However, the death sentences were not carried out because of the moratorium on executions which took effect from the middle of December 1989. Thus the two killers escaped the noose. The death sentences were formally commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court of Appeal on November 14 this year.

Arguing their case before the Cape High Court, the lawyers for the accused maintained that their act met all the requirements for the grant of amnesty. The Amnesty Committee has to be satisfied that the act for which amnesty is sought is politically motivated and, more specifically, at the behest of a known political organisation; the applicant has to make ``full disclosure of all relevant facts'' relating to the act for which amnesty is being sought; and there has to be a ``proportionality'' between the claimed political objective and the act for which amnesty is being sought.

These arguments, advanced during the amnesty hearings held in public in February 1997 (in Benoni) and August 1997 (in Pretoria) by the same lawyers who are seeking judicial review, were rejected by the Amnesty Committee. The application for amnesty was refused in a ruling announced in April last year. The review application is being opposed by the South African Communist Party and the family of Chris Hani. Till now, a decision of the Amnesty Committee has not been reviewed or reversed by any court of law.

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Section  : International
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