FRIDAY, 10.30AM
GAYE DERBY-LEWIS, the wife of fomer Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis, has complained to the Truth and Reconciliation of “gross contempt of court” during her husband’s recent amnesty hearing.
Derby-Lewis, whose amnesty hearing was postponed until next month, is serving a life sentence together with Polish immigrant Janusz Walus for the murder in 1992 of SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani.
Gaye Derby-Lewis on Thursday told the TRC that at the amnesty hearing on June 23, she was “assailed by jumping and screeching war dancers bearing banners, sticks, posters and pieces of cardboard which were thrust into people’s faces. As far as I am concerned this is a gross contempt of court,” she said in an open letter to TRC deputy chair Dr Alex Boraine. She also claimed people in the hall had verbally threatened her husband and Walus.
“Unless we can get a written guarantee that this sort of behaviour will never again occur, we will be forced to take legal action in terms of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s own legislation and in terms of common law contempt of court regulations,” she said. “Further, we would like a far greater police presence in the hall so that miscreants who wish to stomp and scream be forcibly removed,” she added.
Later on Thursday Boraine responded: “I have taken note of the complaints registered by Mrs Derby-Lewis and I will take this matter up with the chairman of the amnesty committee, Judge Hassan Mall. “Whilst the amnesty committee hearings do not a constitute a court of law, nevertheless it has always been our contention that witnesses must not be intimidated and the decorum appropriate to a court of law should be observed.”