All the elements of theatre, comic and tragic, attended this week’s Hani amnesty hearing, writes Swapna Prabhakaran
Clive Derby-Lewis does not look like a man who has been in prison for four years. At his amnesty application in Pretoria this week, he looked like a man who has been sleeping comfortably and he spoke like a man who is remarkably well-informed about the world outside his cell.
He and Janusz Walus, his accomplice in the 1993 murder of South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Chris Hani, flanked their lawyers. Walus stared blankly into space. They faced George Bizos and his team, representing the Hani family.
Amnesty committee member, Judge Hassen Mall, had to warn the crowd early in the proceedings, that “this is not a performance or a theatre”. But all the elements were there – and were played out inside the high proscenium arch of the Pretoria City Hall.
Every afternoon, a strong contingent of SACP and African National Congress members toyi-toyi’d their way down the central aisle, wearing party colours and singing old liberation songs praising their heroes. They carried placards which proclaimed: “Go and rot in jail, you murderers” and “No amnesty for cowards, liars and murderers.”
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela sat next to Hani’s widow Limpho, surrounded by a bevy of famous faces, including the SACP deputy secretary general, Jeremy Cronin, and telecommunications minister, Jay Naidoo.
In the front row on the applicants’ side of the hall sat two rows of silent Conservative Party (CP) supporters, looking rather fragile under the harsh television lights. The men were dressed in dark suits. Lavender-haired wives sat next to them, holding flasks of coffee and listening intently; they had brought sandwiches for the event.
One matronly figure was clicking knitting- needles – frowning over blue-and-green rugby jerseys for her grandchildren with all the concentration of a Madame Defarge – as Derby-Lewis testified on the reasons for Hani’s death. “I do not expect the Hani family to forgive me but to understand there was nothing personal in the attack. If anything, it is an indication of the importance of the man … If he’d been an ordinary member of the SACP he would still have been alive today.”
The hearing began on Monday and is expected to continue through next week.
On Wednesday, Derby-Lewis testified he had had some doubts about the murder but Andries Treurnicht, then the leader of the CP, had allayed his doubts. At this, those wearing green and black broke into ululations of grief, and a woman with tears running down her face, whom I later discovered to be the wife of Justice Minister Dullah Omar, Fareda Omar, yelled: “Ja, blame the dead, the dead can’t answer.”
Derby-Lewis ignored the noisy protest from the audience and said in sombre tones: “In terms of the teachings of the Bible we are told to fight the anti-Christ whenever we can. As a practising Christian I had to clear in my own mind that the act of war could be justifiable in terms of Christian belief, and I discussed the matter with Mr Treurnicht. I got the impression from him that under certain circumstances, it would be permissible to kill in front of the anti-Christ.”
His wife, Gaye Derby-Lewis, was composed and calm throughout the proceedings, never once visibly reacting to what her husband was saying. She had elaborately coiffed her hair and carried a small plastic bag holding soft drinks.
Derby-Lewis went on to say that Chris Hani’s name and home address were on a list of politicians, judges and journalists that his wife had obtained “for journalistic purposes”. Other names on the list of 19 included Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, Pik Botha, Richard Goldstone, then editor of the Sunday Times Ken Owen and Tim du Plessis of Beeld – all of whom were considered opposition to the CP.
Speaking calmly and with quiet self- confidence, Derby-Lewis revealed some details of the deep paranoia that gripped the “broad right”, as he called the mixed bag that included the CP and Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). He believed at the time that Botha was “an agent for the Americans”, Owen “had been hired by the communists and was being compensated (financially)”, and Du Plessis “had been brainwashed” when he went to Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship. In the face of incredulous laughter from most of the audience, Derby-Lewis said: “These were the perceptions of the people on the right.”
He said he and his wife were having tea and cake at a friend’s when a phone call came through saying Hani was dead: “I was shocked, of course.”
His lawyer, Harry Prinsloo, asked: “What did you do then?”
“We finished off our tea, and then we went to do some shopping.”